History of the Xbox
History of the Xbox
The Xbox is manufactured by computer giants Microsoft and was their first dip into the games console market and was at the time set to become bigger than Sony’s Playstation 2. It did hit the UK with a bang though after being released in Europe on the 14th of March 2002 as it was almost a break through console in some respect as it was the first console that enabled users to play online in a mass community against other users via the Xbox Live service. The service required a fee and when the Playstation 2 tried to break into the online field it wasn’t very successful.
Microsoft then saw fit to take advantage of Sony’s delay on the production of the Playstation 3 and after having already developed their all new powerful machine, the Xbox 360, within a matter of months and clever marketing on Microsoft’s part they then produced the Xbox 360 Elite, which was more or less the same as the Xbox 360 console just with a few tweaks here and there with regard to the hardware in the machine, it was advertised as a faster more powerful version of the Xbox 360, which essentially it is but it was still released before the Playstation 3 and due to the amount of sales Microsoft gained from the release of 2 consoles before Sony even managed to release their hotly anticipated Playstation 3 come Christmas 2008, you could safely say that Microsoft were well in the lead in the way of Next-Gen consoles.
Although now I would say that the Playstation 3 is now the more widely used console out of the two, the big reason that Microsoft ran away with the lead in sales with the Xbox is the Xbox Live network, that people still find a lot better than Sony’s online Playstation Network, but the lure of Blu Ray gaming is enough to lure more and more customers in to Sony’s worldwide domination of the gaming market.