ActiveXbox.com: Microsoft Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is a next generation home gaming console which is currently being developed by the largest software company in the world, Microsoft Corporation. The Xbox 360 offers many features, such as the Xbox 360 console hardware as well as software. It allows you to customize and personalize the interface and Xbox Gamer Guide. Also featured are the Ring of Light and Xbox Guide button, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace, Games and Digital Entertainment.

You can find the Official Press Release issued on May 12th, 2005 here, at the official Microsoft PressPass site.

The Xbox 360 Launch event will take place at a yet-unnamed location in the middle of the Mohave desert in CA. There will be 3000 gamers there from around the world, celebrating the launch of Xbox 360. There will be copious Xbox 360 systems set up with high-def monitors, surround sound, the works. Plus food and drink stations, live entertainment and a one-of-a kind Xbox 360 gift for everyone. Microsoft is calling it "Burning Man Meets E3"-- it'll be a party unlike anyone's ever been to. Really a piece of pop culture and video game history with the opportunity to play the complete launch line-up for the first time and get "sneak peeks" on several never-before-seen games. It's the "first generation of the next generation" and it's all for the hardcore gamer. Why not NY City in Times Square or the other usual spots? This was a conscious choice to create a videogame Mecca for the true audience of Xbox 360. The gamer. Our plan is to make this event the center of the gaming universe. And the 360 "Hex 168" winners will be the VIPs. The "Hex 168" contest ends at midnight PDT on the night of November 4, 2005. The content is an opportunity for anyone in the nation to get together with their friends and put their creativity and ingenuity to work and express themselves in a really fun way, nearly at its end and "Hex 168" is the best way to guarantee they'll get entry into the one-of-a kind event and win all the other great prizes.

What is the official name of the next generation Xbox?

The official name is Xbox 360.

On May 12, 2005, Microsoft previewed the new Xbox 360 on MTV at 8:30PM CDT. On this evening Microsoft released the official name as well as showing off the new console design. Microsoft released additional information and provided demos and trailers of upcoming game titles at the 2005 E3 conference on May 16, 2005.

Tuesday November 22, 2005 is the official date of the Xbox 360 launch for North America. Microsoft made this announcement at the 2005 Tokyo Game Show. Europe’s release date is Friday December 2, 2005. And in Japan on Saturday, December 10, 2005.

Microsoft Corporation are the creators of the Xbox, best known for creating the Windows® operating system line, which now runs on over 90% of the world's computers. They are well known as one of the biggest companies in the world.

Brian and Byron from ActiveWin/ActiveXbox have done a full review for your reading pleasure. Click here to read the review.

Beginning in the fall/winter of 2006, Microsoft will also have an available Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for $199.99 USD.

Update: As of summer of 2007, the Xbox 360 HD-DVD has a new price of $179.00 USD.

Microsoft released a dashboard update in Spring of 2007 adding a Marketplace Blade that has full access to downloadable TV shows, movies, and much more.

What is the percentage of consoles returned/repaired at launch due to manufacturing or user malfunction?

Microsoft officially stated that they will not comment on the return ratio. As of summer 2007, all Xbox 360 consoles (new and old) will have a retroactive 3 year warranty for any issues regarding the 3 red light error messages. Anyone who has already paid for an out of warranty repair will be receiving a refund.

What items will be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace at launch and what are the points for each?

On November 22nd, Xbox 360 users who connect their console to a broadband connection and create an Xbox Live membership, either the paid Gold membership or free Silver membership, can look forward to content such as:

In addition, each Xbox Live Arcade game on Xbox 360 offers a fully playable trial version, , enabling gamers to experience their favorite arcade games in high-definition before deciding to purchase.

What has been released to the Xbox Live Marketplace during the launch period?

12/08/05 - New Xbox Live Arcade Titles "Hardwood Backgammon" - Demo and Full "Hardwood Hearts" - Demo and Full "Hardwood Spades" - Demo and Full

Microsoft has not announced a limit to the number of Xbox Live players in a game. This is controlled by the developer. There are currently games in development for the Xbox 360 that support 64 players.

Will my current Gamertag on Xbox 1 carry over to the new Xbox 360 Live Service?

Your current Gamertag on your original Xbox Live Account will carry over to the new Xbox 360 Gold or Silver Live Services. You will be required to connect your Gamertag to a Microsoft Passport authentication system to use your Gamertag in the new Xbox.com forums. For more details on My Xbox and the new Xbox forums: Microsoft’s My Xbox

Will I need to pay for an upgrade from my current Xbox 1 Live Subscription to switch to the new Gold Subscription?

No, there are no upgrade fees, nor will you be required to renew your subscription early. This is a seamless transition, and your expiration date for your subscription does not change.

Xbox Live Gold members will be required to use a credit card which will pay for their annual subscription. Xbox Live Silver (Free) and Xbox Live Gold subscribers will not need a credit card to download premium content or purchase items from the Xbox Live Marketplace. You can purchase “point” cards at local retailers. You can then load your Xbox Live account with these “points” and purchase items with “points”.

Will the new Xbox Live support Windows Live/MSN Messenger Instant Messaging?

The Xbox 360 is all about personalization. Personalization during game play, and even when you are not playing. The Xbox 360 allows you to replace the default "Chill" white faceplate with hundreds (eventually thousands) of custom face plates.

This is Brian Kvalheim's (ActiveXbox) Gamercard. Feel free to add me to your friends list:

Sign up for a Gamercard at http://www.xbox.com/myxbox using your Passport (you can just use your Hotmail email address if you already have one), or just complete the Xbox 360 setup, which will prompt you to create your Gamercard. The Gamercard and Gamertag are used in the Xbox forums.

Yes, with the Xbox 360 you can personalize your dashboard too. Available at the Marketplace and included also in some games, you can change the appearance of the Xbox 360 blades by installing new themes. Another option available is to connect to your home network, and having your picture folder on your PC shared. The Xbox 360 will recognize the folder, and allow you to use any of those images as your dashboard background.

Yes, Microsoft plans to release 2 updates every year. These updates including interface enhancements, bug fixes and added features. Most of the enhancements are from consumer feedback.

What updates were included in the free Xbox 360 Dashboard update for Spring 2006?

What updates were included in the free Xbox 360 Dashboard update for Spring 2007?

Instant Messaging Comes to Xbox 360

Chat with your friends via Live Messenger. With this update to Xbox 360, friends and families can easily connect and chat directly from their television using Windows Live Messenger, a network of more than 20 billion relationships and more than 260 million active accounts.

Connected Experiences - Members of the six-million-strong Xbox LIVE community currently send more than two million text and voice messages a day and can now use Windows Live Messenger to text chat with up to six people on their contact list at one time, while playing games, listening to music, or watching movies. Text chat adds to the variety of options friends and families already have to communicate with on Xbox LIVE, including voice and video chat.

Current relationships on Windows Live Messenger and Xbox LIVE will be unified on Xbox 360 and users will see at a glance if their existing friends on Windows Live Messenger have Gamertags, instantly expanding the breadth of connected experiences they can share online.

Know instantly which achievement you accomplished.
Beginning the week of May 7, users of Windows Live Messenger on Xbox 360 can text chat using the virtual keyboard accessible on Xbox 360, or by connecting a USB keyboard to the console. This summer Microsoft will launch a QWERTY text-input device, a new accessory that will connect directly into the Xbox 360 controller to support text and instant messaging
A richer Achievement notification pop-up will showcase the name of the unlocked Achievement and the Gamerscore value without needing to leave the game to check the Achievements list.
Enhanced family settings features for Xbox LIVE communications enable different defaults for video chat and voice chat.
A new Xbox LIVE Marketplace blade lets Xbox LIVE members access the content they seek—whether it is game content or TV shows and movies (available in the United States)—from one place on Xbox LIVE.
Updates to Xbox LIVE Arcade allow owners to quickly see which Xbox LIVE Arcade games their friends are playing and join in the fun. Xbox LIVE members can also compare progress of leaderboard scores and Achievements directly with all friends on their friends list.
Expanded "Tell a Friend" capabilities make it easier than ever to boast about Achievements and high scores.
A new option in Auto Downloads provides faster access to the entire collection of free, trial-version Xbox LIVE Arcade games.
New progressive download controls provide easy access to optimal viewing options by letting people fast-forward, rewind, pause and resume as their video is downloaded from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
Extension of the background download functionality will allow owners to set their Xbox 360 console to turn off automatically after downloads are complete.
When the user is in the dashboard and an Xbox 360 game is in the console, then the name of the game is displayed in the tray icon of the dashboard. If the user highlights the tray icon, then achievements and Gamerscore are displayed for that game based on the signed-in user.
Integrated support for the new Xbox 360 text input device. Note that this device includes a new wired headset.
Playback progress bar indicates download completion.
Switchable aspect ratio now available during video playback (Auto to Letterbox, Zoom, Stretch, Native).
Player and friends lists now quickly show session presence information for quick identification of users that are joinable.
Added H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps peak, Baseline, Main, and High profiles with 2 channel AAC LC.
Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 5 Mbps peak, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC.
Shows folder hierarchy for video content played from all devices.
Bookmarks are stored for each video that the user plays, remembering the user's last location in the file as well as the aspect ratio that the user chose for that file.
Video trick modes (fast forward, rewind, chapter skip) can now be used while downloading Video Marketplace content.
Skip forward and backward functionality has been improved to skip to the next or previous chapter. Each video is divided into 10 "chapters" allowing you to quickly skip around video content.
The information bar that is turned on via the On-Screen Display (OSD) now shows you exactly where you are in the playback of the video file. In addition, it will also show for Video Marketplace content how much of the file has been downloaded and where the "chapters" exist in the file.
Windows Media protected content (WM-DRM) can now be streamed from the PC to the console. If the WM-DRM license is missing or corrupted, then a specific error message is displayed to the user. Bookmarking is also stored for protected content.
When a user selects an item for download from Marketplace, then the system will determine if there is sufficient disk space for the item and, if not, will ask the user to delete content on the HDD. The system provides a sorted by size list of videos, game trailers, demos and arcade content to aid the user in the deletion process. The same list of items are also available from within memory so that users can quickly see which items are consuming the most disk space.
The console will block the user who attempts to download content onto a storage device that will never have the capacity to store the item without deducting any points associated with the content item.
The screensaver is disabled when playing photos from any source.

This is an Xbox 360 Development Kit. This kit can be used for "previewing" unfinished games for review purposes. This offers the ability to play or preview "beta" games, or games that haven't reached the "RTM" (released to manufacturing) or "Gold" status.

With an XDK debug kit, you are given "reformat" cd's. With the reformat CD's, you can format the XDK Xbox 360 console in two ways: Retail or Dev Kit. The process is call "Recovery". You can also recover in multiple languages during recovery setup.

Besides the XDK debug software, the actual unit itself is gray in color instead of the trademarked "Chill" white. The additional software in the XDK gives you the ability to take screenshots of games through your computer network. The console also sports a larger hard drive as opposed to the standard 20gb hard drive on the retail unit. You can also play game titles from any region around the globe.

Not entirely, some Microsoft based games will play on both UK and US Xbox 360's, but nearly all other titles will only play on the machine from the region they were bought in. NTSC for America, PAL for Europe.

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