Microsoft Xbox Console: The Next Generation of Video Game Systems
Fakhrul Anuar

Defined Tag: Microsoft Xbox Console.

Entertainment in the 21st century is not only circulating around music video, film movies or television programs. Through development of technology, video game consoles have been developed and produced targeted mostly for the younger members of society or for those adults with kids in heart.

From the first generation of the existence, video game console has become one of the hottest and popular items in the electronic market and has defining new meaning of home entertainment. In order to cater the high demand of these video game consoles, different game consoles have been released by various technology-base companies.

Microsoft, without exception, has also made the move by create and produce the sixth generation of video game consoles, the Xbox.

According to Microsoft, Xbox game console takes you away beyond the ordinary entertainment. It is not just plain video games consoles. Besides playing games of your choice, through the high-technology embedded in it, you also have access to music and movies, which can be consider as one of your home theatre components. Therefore, the console, by virtue, lets you share good times with your friends and even lets you compete with other gamers around the world.

Xbox's design was based on the fact that there must be a game system that will take advantage of the slowdown of saturated PC gaming market and at the same time integrate a built-in Ethernet adapter. It was the first video game console to integrate a hard disk drive into its system, which is used mainly to store game data compressed in a ZIP archive and content download from Xbox Live.

Therefore, it eliminated the need for a separate memory card, which is popularized by Sony's Playstation. Most of the Xbox games make use of the console's hard drive as the disk cache for quicker game loading time. There are also games that support "Custom soundtracks", which allows the user to rip music from standard audio CDs and add it to the soundtrack of the game.

Xbox was Microsoft's first independent business enterprise in the video game console industry, after the development of the tools for MSX (the standardized home computer architecture of Microsoft in the 1980s) and the operating system for Windows. It was launched on different dates: November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Europe.

The development of Microsoft Xbox console was initially facilitated by a small team formed by Microsoft, which included the famous high energy physicist and game developer Seamus Blackley. The rumors of the release of a Microsoft-developed video game console first spread at the end of 1999 following interviews of Microsoft big boss Bill Gates, saying that the company is developing a gaming and at the same time a multimedia device that is essential in the convergence of digital entertainment era. And the company confirmed such rumors through a press release on the "Xbox project" on March 10, 2000.

Microsoft Xbox console, as one of the modern video game consoles ever produced, has provides unusual entertainment for gamers; especially those who are looking for a gaming experience that will make them crave for it. And indeed, Microsoft's Xbox did it-one of the game systems that you will love once you get your hand on it.

Article written by Fakhrul Anuar, the webmaster of http://video-games.cosmomatrix.com