Microsoft Xbox

Summary

The XBox is the first American console since Ataris Jaguar five years earlier. It is Microsoft’s first step into the console business, except for granted licenses for BASIC extensions or the Windows CE system of Dreamcast. This does not mean that Americans are less capable than their Japanese competitors: Microsoft can rely on decades of proven product development as well as an almost limitless budget. The XBox is produced and marketed as professionally as the PS2 or the GameCube. It is also the first console to have a hard disk and hardware for online gaming, special features that become standard from the next generation of consoles.

The entry of Microsoft marks a point from which PCs and consoles approach each other in their technical specifications and the gaming feeling of a console game no longer necessarily differs from that of a PC game.