The Xbox 360 is Microsoft's successor to their original Xbox video game console, referred to during development as "Xenon", "Xbox 2", or "Xbox Next". The console was released on November 22, 2005 in North America, and December 2 in Europe. It will be released on December 10 in Japan, February 2, 2006 in Mexico, February 24 in Korea, and on March 2, 2006 in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
The Xbox 360 will compete against the upcoming generation of consoles, including the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution, and was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, a week before Eł.
In most countries the console is sold in two different configurations: the "Xbox 360" and the "Xbox 360 Core System". The Xbox 360 configuration, often referred to as the "Premium Edition", includes a hard drive (needed to play original Xbox games), wireless controller, headset, ethernet cable, Xbox Live silver subscription, and a component HD AV cable.
The console hardware is based on a custom IBM PowerPC-based "Xenon" central processing unit (CPU) and a custom ATI R500-based "Xenos" graphics processing unit (GPU). It is equipped with 512 MB of RAM and uses the DVD-ROM storage medium for Xbox 360 game software.
Controller The Xbox 360 has the ability to support up to four wireless controllers. Alternately it can support two wired controllers through the use of its USB ports at the front, the USB port on the back will support a third controller. The wired controller has a nine foot (2.74 m) long cord with a break-away feature. The wireless controller has a battery life of up to 25 hours on the NiMH rechargeable battery pack (optional and recommended) and a recommended range of up to 30 feet (9.14 m), although it has been tested to work at a greater range.
The controller for the Xbox 360 is a similar version of the Type-S gamepad for the original Xbox. The Xbox 360 controller adds an Xbox guide button, which has the appearance of the Xbox 360 emblem and is surrounded by a ring of green LEDs. Pressing the Xbox guide button will bring the Xbox 360 out of sleep mode, turn the console on or off, and bring up the "Xbox Guide" for access to digital movies, music and games libraries.
The ring of light lights up the quadrant (on the controller as well as the console) that correlates with the quadrant of the screen you will be playing on (if more than one person is playing the game). The black and white buttons have been redesigned as shoulder buttons, now referred to as bumper buttons ("LB" and "RB"), located above the left and right triggers. The rear of the controller includes a port where the player can connect a headset. This port replaces the two non-standard USB connectors on the front of the Xbox controller.
Detachable hard drive A detachable 20 gigabyte hard drive is used for the storage of games, music, downloaded trailers, levels, demos, player preferences, and community-created content from Xbox Live Marketplace; it may also be used to transfer such content between Xbox 360 units. A hard drive is also required for the user to be able to play backward compatible Xbox games. The individual drives will come pre-loaded with a promotional video about the making of the Xbox 360, additional Dashboard skins, songs, additional Xbox Live Gamertag images, and Hexic HD, an Xbox Live Arcade game from Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. This content will be included on both the bundled hard drive and the stand alone product. This drive will not be included in the Core System bundle at launch, and also will not be sold separately in Japan.
According to J Allard, the chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, Microsoft may sell larger capacity detachable hard drives for the Xbox 360 in the future, and territories outside of North America may have a differently sized hard drive in the retail unit.
Faceplates The default faceplate (Xbox 360's Chrome or Core System's Chill) can be replaced with a range of custom designs, each to be sold separately. Microsoft has also distributed two promotional faceplates, one for those present at the E3 2005 unveiling and one for VIP X05 attendees. The price of these custom designs are around $20 with more to be released by third party manufacturers.