Product type | Video gaming |
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Owner | Microsoft Corporation |
Country | Microsoft Redmond Campus, Redmond, Washington, United States |
Introduced | November 15, 2001 |
Markets | Worldwide |
Registered as a trademark in | Worldwide |
Website | www |
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. It represents a series of video game consoles developed by Microsoft, with three consoles released in the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations respectively. The brand also represents applications (games), streaming services, and an online service by the name of Xbox Live. The brand was first introduced on November 15, 2001 in the United States, with the launch of the original Xbox console.
That original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 10, 2006. Microsoft's second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2 million consoles worldwide as of April 18, 2013. The successor to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft's most recent console, the Xbox One, was revealed on May 21, 2013. The Xbox One has been released in 21 markets in total, with a Chinese release on September 29, 2014. The head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who succeeded former head Marc Whitten in late March 2014.
The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast (which stopped American sales before the Xbox went on sale), and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The name Xbox was derived from a contraction of DirectX Box, a reference to Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX.