Xbox 360

The game Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action comes bundled with four special wireless controllers called Big Button Controllers, which resemble game show buzzers. Each controller has one large “buzzer” button at the top, which also doubles as a d-pad, and four smaller buttons for multiple choice answers. The game’s price is unaffected by the inclusion of the controllers. Other games such as UNO and Wits and Wagers have added support for the Big Button Controllers.The Big Button Controllers use an external IR transmitter which connects to the Xbox 360 via USB. When the IR transmitter is connected all four quadrants on the ‘ring of light’ are lit to tell the user that four controller devices are active. These big button controllers can be used at the same time as the wired and wireless gamepads and the wireless headsets.

The Xbox 360 can be subject to a number of technical problems. Since the console’s release in 2005, the console gained a bad reputation from the general public and in the press through articles portraying the poor reliability and relatively high failure rate of the early consoles. Since these problems surfaced, design modifications have been made to the console to improve reliability. All consoles manufactured after June 2007 have a second GPU heatsink to reduce overheating.In February 2008 an examination of 1040 Xbox 360s by SquareTrade found a 16.4% (one in six) failure rate. 171 were returned under warranty as “disabled”, 60% with the red “ring of death”. To aid consumers with defective consoles, Microsoft has extended the Xbox 360’s manufacturer’s warranty to three years for general failure errors only.

The main unit of the Xbox 360 itself has slight double concavity in matte white or black. It features a port on the top (when vertical, left side when horizontal) to which a custom-housed hard drive unit can be attached in sizes of either 20 or 120 GB. Inside, the Xbox 360 uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU. Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos which has 10 MB of embedded eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size.On February 22, 2008, Toshiba announced that it will discontinue manufacturing HD DVD equipment, which affects the Xbox 360, as it supports HD DVD format. According to Toshiba, this will help settle the war between HD DVD and Blu Ray formats.[62] On February 26, 2008, the price of the HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 dropped from $129.99 to $49.99. This comes just two days after Microsoft confirmed that they would no longer produce the HD DVD player.

The Xbox 360 launched with 14 games in North America and 13 in Europe. The console’s best-selling game for 2005, Call of Duty 2, sold over a million copies.Five other games sold as well in the console’s first year in the market: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter,The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,[58] Dead or Alive 4, Saints Rowand Gears of War. Only six games were initially offered in Japan, and eagerly anticipated titles such as Dead or Alive 4 and Enchanted Arms were not released until several weeks after launch. Games more suitable to the region are planned or have since been released, such as Chromehounds, Ninety-Nine Nights, and Phantasy Star Universe. Microsoft-backed Mistwalker has since released Blue Dragon in the region, and currently has two other Japanese-style games in development, Lost Odyssey and Cry On.[citation needed] On October 19, 2006, with over 10,000 pre-orders, a limited-edition Blue Dragon bundle sold out in Japan on the first day.[citation needed] The pack, priced at JP¥29,800 includes the Xbox 360 core system with a copy of Blue Dragon, along with a table calendar, Blue Dragon faceplate, and five miniature character figures. At the Lepzig game convention in 2007, Microsoft revealed details of Project Gotham Racing 4, Rock Band, Tom Clancy’s EndWar, Dark Sector, FIFA 08, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground.
E3 2006 was the first large-scale show after the console’s launch and the first trailer for Halo 3, the sequel to the original Xbox’s best-selling game,was shown there. Fable 2 was also shown, along with Alan Wake, Mass Effect and Too Human.Bill Gates spoke of plans to integrate several Microsoft services into one entity with Live Anywhere.Shadowrun was the first game announced to be compatible with Live Anywhere.Several games originally released on PC have also been released on the Xbox 360, such as F.E.A.R. and Quake 4. Grand Theft Auto IV was shown and will be the first title in the series to be released for the Xbox 360 the same day as its PlayStation 3 counterpart. At X06, Microsoft announced several new titles, along with information on future releases. Splinter Cell: Conviction, set to release after Splinter Cell: Double Agent, was announced to be exclusive to the Xbox 360, as were BioShock and Banjo-Kazooie 3. At the event, Halo Wars was also announced, along with an untitled Halo project. In addition, Microsoft published sequels to some of its more successful franchises on the original Xbox, such as Forza Motorsport 2, Project Gotham Racing 3 & 4, and Fuzion Frenzy 2. They have published original games based on new IPs, such as Viva Piñata and Gears of War.

Backward compatibility on the Xbox 360 is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox. Emulated games are rendered in 720p, 1080i, or 1080p HD resolution with anti-aliasing enabled rather than the Xbox standard of 480p(anti-aliasing is also applied when the output resolution is 480p.) However there are also games that do not perform well in emulation; these often exhibit a lower framerate on the Xbox 360,as well as various sound bugs and occasional gameplay glitches. A hard drive and the downloading of an emulation profile is needed in order to play original Xbox games. Updated emulation profiles are automatically obtained through Xbox Live, or alternatively they can be burned to a CD with files downloaded from Xbox.com, or by ordering a free update disc from Microsoft. A full list of backward-compatible games is maintained at Xbox.com.The current U.S. list includes 464 games as of the November 2007 update; fewer titles are backward compatible in European and Japanese markets, with 295 and 101 titles respectively. Microsoft originally stated that they intend to release more emulation profiles as they become available, with a goal of making the entire Xbox library playable on the Xbox 360. They have since made multiple statements indicating that this may never be complete though the rate of updates to the backwards compatibility list still continues steadily.At 2008’s CES, Albert Penello, the Xbox 360’s group marketing manager, said that “engineering work around bringing out new titles” is “winding down”

The Xbox 360’s graphical user interface GUI is the Xbox 360 Dashboard; a tabbed interface that features five “Blades” (formerly four blades), and was designed by AKQA. It can be launched automatically when the console boots up without a disc, or when the disc tray is ejected. However, the user may choose to launch a game automatically if a disc is inserted. A simplified version of it can also be accessed at any time via the Xbox Guide button on the gamepad. This simplified version shows the user’s gamercard, Xbox Live messages and friends list. It also allows for personal and music settings, in addition to voice or video chats, or returning to the primary Dashboard from the game.Since the console’s release, Microsoft has released several updates for the Dashboard software. These updates have included adding new features to the console; enhancing Xbox Live functionality and multimedia playback cabilities; adding compatibility for new accessories; and fixing bugs in the software. The latest Dashboard update, revision 2.0.6683, was made available on December 4, 2007.

The Xbox 360 supports videos in .wmv-format, as well as high-definition .wmv-videos, H.264, MPEG-4, and PlaysForSure WMV videos.The Fall 2007 dashboard update added support for the playback of MPEG-4 ASP format videos.The Xbox 360 also supports audio playback, with music player controls accessible through the Xbox 360 Guide button. Users may play back their own music while playing games or using the dashboard, and can play music with an interactive visual synthesizer.The Xbox 360 can also display pictures and perform slideshows of photo collections with various transition effects. Users can also play audio in the background while viewing a slideshow.Music, photos and videos can be played from standard USB mass storage devices, Xbox 360 proprietary storage devices (such as memory cards or Xbox 360 hard drives), and servers or computers with Windows Media Center or Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher within the local-area network in streaming mode.This is possible with video files up to HD-resolution and with several codecs (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV) and container formats (WMV, MOV, TS).In the UK the Xbox 360 will be enabled to download and display BT Vision video content.

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005, in the United States and Canada; December 2, 2005, in Europe and December 10, 2005, in Japan. It was later launched in Mexico, Colombia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, India, Brazil, Poland, Czech Republic, and Russia. Microsoft has additionally announced official launches in: Hungary, Slovakia,and the Philippines.In its first year on the market, the system launched in 36 countries, more countries than any console has launched in a single year.Due to its early launch, the Xbox 360 had a one-year lead on both of its competitors, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii.