Microsoft

Microsoft was involved in gaming long before it made consoles, publishing popular PC series such as Age of Empires, Links and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

It entered the console market on 15 November 2001 with the release of the original Xbox.

Since then Microsoft has become one of the major forces in the games industry and one of the largest game publishers in the world.

Xbox With the Xbox, Microsoft brought much of its experience with PCs to the console market.

The Xbox was the first game console with a built-in hard disk, which let players save games directly to the console instead of relying on memory cards.

A year after launch, Microsoft followed up with Xbox Live, its online service for connecting players.

The Xbox was home to several major hits, most notably the Halo and Fable series.

Although it sold far fewer units than the PlayStation 2, the Xbox showed that Microsoft was serious about consoles, and it outsold Nintendo’s GameCube.

The Xbox proved surprisingly hard to emulate, and it took many years before emulators such as xemu could run a large part of its library.

Xbox 360 In 2005, Microsoft released its second console, the Xbox 360, with Xbox Live as a core part of the system.

Hardware faults in early models caused Microsoft serious problems. The “Red Ring of Death”, a hardware failure usually brought on by overheating, became a common sight.

Microsoft extended the warranty and repaired affected consoles, but the problem damaged its reputation, and later hardware revisions were released to fix it.

During the Xbox 360’s lifespan Microsoft introduced Kinect, a motion-sensing camera that let people control games with their bodies.

Kinect sold very well, and that success may have contributed to the decision to build the Xbox One around it.

Xbox 360 emulation has made good progress thanks to the Xenia project, which can now play many games.

Xbox One In 2013 Microsoft released its third console, the Xbox One. It was originally pitched as an all-in-one entertainment hub for games, TV and other media.

That broad focus muddled Microsoft’s message, and many players felt the company was putting TV ahead of games.

The Xbox One also launched bundled with the Kinect sensor, which made it more expensive than the PlayStation 4, and Kinect took up some of the console’s already modest resources.

These missteps led to changes in leadership, and in 2014 Phil Spencer was appointed head of Xbox.

Phil Spencer refocused Xbox on games and made several major changes, including dropping Kinect from the console bundle.

One of the most impressive additions under his leadership was backward compatibility. The Xbox One can play many Xbox and Xbox 360 games, some at higher resolutions than the originals.

Given how long it has taken PC emulators to run Xbox and Xbox 360 games well, this was a considerable technical achievement.

There is still no working Xbox One emulator for the PC.

Xbox Series X In November 2020 Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and the smaller, cheaper Xbox Series S. Both can play almost all Xbox One games, as well as the Xbox and Xbox 360 games supported by the Xbox One.