Microsoft Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is manufactured by Microsoft and is the second video games console to be produced by the company. Previously Microsoft produced the Xbox and now the Xbox 360 is on the market. The Xbox 360 competes within the games console market against the Playstation 3 manufactured by Sony and the Wii manufactured by Nintendo.

One of the most popular services which is offered on the Microsoft console is the integrated Xbox Live, this allows players to compete online, download arcade games, game demos, trailers, TV shows, music and movies and its Window Media Centre multimedia capabilities.

There are also services which include region specific access to third party media streaming services such as Netflix, ESPN and Sky Player. The games console was unveiled on May 12th 2005 on the MTV television programmes; there was an information launch on the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The console sold out completely upon release in all regions except Japan.

In June 2010 there were 41.7 million Xbox 360 consoles throughout the world. On June 14th 2010 Microsoft also announced that there would be a redesign of the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 can now be bought in a large amount of countries as well as the US and Europe, these countries include Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Russia. The main unit of the console is available in two colours, these are black or white. Hard drive sizes include 20, 60, 120 or 250 GB.

Within the Xbox 360 is a chit designed by IBM and a CPU which is created by Xenon. The graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos, which has 10 MB of eDRAM, its main memory pool is 512 MB in size. There are numerous accessories which are available for the console these include wired and also wireless controllers. Faceplates can be bought to customise the control, headsets for chatting, a webcam for video chatting, dance mats and gamerzice for exercise. There are three sizes of memory units or four sizes of hard drive available. The Kinect is a new piece of hardware which is used in accordance with the Xbox 360, it is a controller free gaming and entertainment experience. This add on peripheral enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without a game controller by using gestures, spoken commands and presented objects and images.

Many people either have an Xbox or Playstation, there has been a continual battle between the consoles. Many people enjoy the Xbox due to the Xbox live platform which is available; many people enjoy playing each other live on the Internet. A new console from Microsoft is rumoured and people are already circulating rumours around what console is next. The Kinect recently launched is seen as an attempt to battle the competition between the Nintendo Wii.