15 Years of XBOX

The 14th of November, 2001, a year after Sony launched the PS2, 10 months since then-President George W. Bush took office in the White House, and two months after series of attacks on American soil. Microsoft's CEO Bill Gates thrown the gauntlet as he told the gaming world that Microsoft accepted their challenge to create their very own gaming console we know as the XBOX. The year 2016 marks the 15th anniversary of the XBOX console gaming as a whole and with the XBOX spawned three different generations from the first one, to the XBOX 360 of 2005, up to 2013's XBOX One, 15 years of progress have shown that Microsoft accomplished their goal to create a gaming console to up the ante in the console gaming revolution.

So, 15 years of XBOX, and as the world honors the XBOX's 15th anniversary with loads of memories of their favorite XBOX hits such as HALO, Forza Motorsport, Gears of War, Project Gotham Racing, and many others, rest assured that the original XBOX cannot be forgotten and let's investigate Microsoft's entry to the console gaming revolution, back in the time when the Dreamcast is fading away while the Gamecube and PS2 are surging like a power surge.

It all began with a project involving numerous laptops disintegrated into pieces following Microsoft's cooperation with SEGA to support Windows CE on the Dreamcast. After its cooperation with SEGA in terms of network connectivity to a short-lived console, the XBOX was born and its innovative features set a template to future gaming consoles to come.

Although the Sega Dreamcast is the first console to provide online connectivity, the XBOX pushed online connectivity further with a fee-based XBOX Live service launched a year later, allowing its subscribers to play multiplayer games and download new content via broadband connection. It was the first to offer an 8GB or 10GB HDD, which eliminates the dependent use of memory cards like what the PS2, the Dreamcast, and the GameCube do. Whereas the Dreamcast failed, the XBOX rose to prominence and such success was carried out to its successors such as 2005's XBOX 360 and 2013's XBOX One.

For the past fifteen years, the XBOX garnered 222,468,423 players, 100,539,390,670 total gaming hours, 29,000,304,183 total multiplayer hours, 32,667,582,157 achievements unlocked, 572,605,554,587 Gamerscores (with the highest gamerscore is a legendary 1,416,465), and 4,233,891,482 friends made. With hit XBOX greats like HALO and Forza Motorsport, there's more to celebrate 15 years of XBOX by whatever means necessary.

Cheers, XBOX! And here's for another 15 more years!

Report: http://news.xbox.com/2016/11/15/celebrating-15-years-xbox/