Xbox Released — Microsoft Enters the Console Market

The original Xbox went on sale in North America on 15 November 2001 at an estimated retail price of US$299. Japan followed on 22 February 2002 at ¥34,800, and Europe and Australia on 14 March 2002. For North American players the Xbox is a 2001 machine; for Japanese players it arrived in 2002.

Announced at GDC in March 2000

Microsoft went public with its console on 10 March 2000, when Bill Gates took the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. The press release has him saying "Building on our strengths as a software company, Xbox will offer game developers a powerful platform and game enthusiasts an incredible experience." The launch was slated for fall 2001.

The same release ended with an addendum listing the components:

The addendum also gave performance figures: 300 million micropolygons or particles per second, and 150 million transformed and lit polygons per second. Both are Microsoft's own claims.

According to English Wikipedia, the shipping hardware ran its CPU at 733 MHz and used NVIDIA's NV2A graphics chip at 233 MHz. It carried PC parts and the DirectX programming interface straight into a living-room console; English Wikipedia traces the idea to four Microsoft engineers who started the project in 1998.

North America: a midnight launch and 1.5 million by New Year

Sales in North America began at midnight between 14 and 15 November. Microsoft's launch-day release says the console was stocked at more than 15,000 retail locations across North America and that nineteen games were available in launch week. The five the release singled out were Halo, NFL Fever 2002, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Project Gotham Racing and Dead or Alive 3—the last of them from Japan's Tecmo.

On 8 January 2002, at CES, Microsoft announced that it had sold 1.5 million units in North America between the 15 November launch and the end of 2001. That is a sales figure, not a shipment figure. The release ran under the headline "Xbox Launch One of Most Successful in Video Game History"—Microsoft's own verdict on its own launch, made seven weeks after the console went on sale. The same release cited the NPD Group as reporting that buyers took home more than three games per console, the highest attach rate ever recorded for a console launch.

Japan: twelve games on day one

For Japan, Microsoft offered a standard console at ¥34,800 and a Special Edition at ¥39,800. A release dated 21 February 2002 (US time) describes Bill Gates greeting the first Japanese buyers, with 12 games on sale at launch and 22 expected by the end of March. The line-up carried the names of Japanese publishers including Sega, Konami, Capcom and Tecmo.

According to English Wikipedia, Japan received the smaller "Controller S" as standard from launch instead of the larger controller packed in North America, and Japanese sales came to roughly 475,000 units. Next to the North American start, the Japanese launch was a small one.

What the hard drive and Ethernet port were for

In the launch-day release, chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach pointed to the built-in hard drive and Ethernet port and said: "Online is our secret weapon." Yet the same release noted that broadband service was "scheduled to go live in summer 2002"—online play did not exist on the day the console went on sale.

Xbox Live actually opened on 15 November 2002, exactly a year after the console, in the United States and Canada. According to Microsoft, it required a broadband connection; the starter kit cost US$49.99 (C$79.99), included the Xbox Communicator headset, and nine Xbox Live games were in stores on day one. Put the network port and the storage in every console first, and add the service later: that sequence is what set the original Xbox's design apart.

Afterwards

Microsoft's consoles continued through several generations to the Xbox Series X|S in 2020, and in 2023 the acquisition of Activision Blizzard closed, pulling the business further toward software. The company as a whole is covered on the Microsoft page.