Microsoft’s games business had been built on the PC, and the Xbox was its first console. Bill Gates announced it to developers at the 2000 Game Developers Conference, and Edge later called it Microsoft’s “big conceptual transformation from software to hardware”. The machine that reached American shops on 15 November 2001 was built from PC parts: an Intel processor, an Nvidia graphics chip and a hard disk. Every one had an Ethernet port, a year before Microsoft had an online service to plug it into.
The hard disk was the part that most changed how games were written for it. Microsoft sold it to the public as a very large memory card, but to developers it was three separate stores, one of them an extension of main memory that the machine wiped every time it was switched on.
Fast facts
- Manufacturer: Microsoft.
- Launch: North America 15 November 2001 ($299); Japan 22 February 2002; Europe 14 March 2002 (£299 in the UK, cut to £199 in April).
- CPU: Intel Pentium III-class processor at 733 MHz.
- Graphics: Nvidia NV2A, given as 233 MHz in later technical sources (300 MHz in some early tables).
- RAM: 64 MB, shared by processor and graphics.
- Storage: 8 GB hard disk.
- Media: DVD; film playback was an optional extra.
- Network: 10/100 Ethernet built in.
- Controllers: four ports.
- Sales: about 24 million, according to public sources.
A PC in a console’s case
When J Allard showed the finished design at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2001, Edge found it large, “reminiscent of a piece of high-end hi-fi kit”, with four controller ports and a front-loading DVD tray. Edge reported that the processor was now faster than first announced while the Nvidia graphics chip’s speed “has decreased slightly”, and that the chip was “now officially called the NV2A”.
Early tables did not agree on the graphics clock. Edge’s comparison of the three new consoles in January 2002 still gave the chip as 300 MHz. Electronic Gaming Monthly, setting the Xbox beside its successor in 2005, gave 233 MHz, which is the figure later technical sources use. The two agree on the rest: a 733 MHz Intel processor, which EGM called a Pentium III, and 64 MB of memory shared between processor and graphics chip, at 6.4 GB a second. Edge put the machine’s theoretical peak at 150 million polygons a second and its “estimated real performance” at 50 million, against 20 million for the PlayStation 2.
Because the parts were PC parts, Edge predicted in January 2002 that the Xbox was “likely to become the homebrew console of choice”: an unofficial port of the arcade emulator MAME had existed “some months before it was released”.
The hard disk is three stores
Microsoft sold the drive to the public as a memory card that happened to be enormous. Seamus Blackley, who ran the Xbox’s Advanced Technology Group, told Edge in June 2001 that this was only half the story, and that Microsoft was not sure how to explain the rest: “we have talked to so many developers over the last year and now we have just started talking to consumers and we are not sure what to talk about.”
To a developer, he said, the disk had three areas:
| Area | What it acts as |
|---|---|
| “You Don’t Touch” | ROM: “it is not ROM because it is on the hard drive” |
| “Save” | a memory card |
| “Scratch” | RAM, “as it gets reformatted every time you turn the machine on” |
The Scratch area carried “all the streaming and virtual memory stuff”, and it did not survive a power cycle: “the thing with the Scratch area is it is non-persistent.” A game could copy data there from the DVD and read it back much faster later in the session, but it had to assume the area would be empty the next time the console was switched on.
Launch
The US launch went well. Microsoft’s main launch game, Bungie’s Halo: Combat Evolved, was given 10 out of 10 by Edge. While the launch celebrations were going on, Gates told the magazine: “We made our bet on broadband gaming. We built an Ethernet adaptor into every Xbox and we put a hard disk into every Xbox, so it’s a very different approach than anybody’s taken before.”
Japan was harder. The Xbox went on sale there on 22 February 2002, and Edge reported that Microsoft “shifted around 123,000 units during its first week”, against the 300,000 GameCubes Nintendo had sold in its launch week. The European launch on 14 March 2002 was followed little more than a month later by a price cut from £299 to £199, which Edge said led to speculation that the console had “not been a roaring success in Europe”. Seamus Blackley resigned around the same time.
In September 2002 Microsoft bought the British studio Rare for $375 million, to make games for the Xbox.
Xbox Live
The online service Gates had described went live in the US on 15 November 2002, with Europe to follow early the next year. A starter kit cost the price of a game, $50 or £32, and held the software, a headset for voice chat and a twelve-month subscription. It worked only over broadband. Each player had a single “Gamertag”, and Microsoft ran every part of the network itself, which Edge compared to “a walled garden”. That control had critics: Edge noted that it was “certainly not to the tastes of Electronic Arts”. J Allard aimed for “tens of thousands” of subscribers in 2002 and “hundreds of thousands” by the end of 2003.
Later years
The Xbox 360 replaced it in November 2005. According to public sources, production ended in 2006, after about 24 million had been sold, most of them in North America, and Xbox Live for the original console closed on 15 April 2010.
Sources
- Edge issue 94, February 2001, p. 8: J Allard’s unveiling at CES, the NV2A and the Ethernet port.
- Edge issue 98, June 2001: the GDC report on Gates’s announcement a year earlier (p. 51); the Seamus Blackley interview on the hard disk (p. 52).
- Edge issue 106, January 2002: the US launches of 15 and 18 November and the Gates interview (pp. 8-9); the three-console comparison table, the $299 and £299 prices and the homebrew prediction (p. 65); Halo’s 10/10 score in the recently reviewed list.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 193, July 2005, p. 67: Xbox specification set against the Xbox 360’s.
- Edge issue 108, March 2002: the 14 March European launch date.
- Edge issue 109, April 2002, p. 6: the Japanese launch on 22 February and first-week sales.
- Edge issue 111, June 2002, p. 6: the £199 price, the European reception and Seamus Blackley’s resignation.
- Edge issue 115, October 2002, pp. 7-9: Xbox Live’s launch date, starter kit, Gamertags, the closed network and J Allard’s targets.
- Microsoft’s purchase of Rare: see the Rare entry and its sources.
- Wikipedia, “Xbox (console)” (web, secondary): the NV2A’s 233 MHz clock, the 24 million total and its regional split, the end of production in 2006, the Xbox 360’s November 2005 launch and the 15 April 2010 closure of Xbox Live for the original console. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_(console)