Games - Xbox 360

	Games - Xbox 360

Xbox 360 is the successor to Microsoft's original Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes among the upcoming generation of consoles, including the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution, and was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, a week before the E³ trade show. The Xbox 360 is currently the only seventh generation console available.

In all countries except Japan the console is sold in two different configurations: the "Xbox 360" and the "Xbox 360 Core System". The former configuration is often referred to as the "Premium Edition", which includes a hard drive (which is required for operations including backwards compatibility with limited original Xbox games), a wireless controller, a headset, an Ethernet cable, an Xbox Live silver subscription, and a component HD AV cable (which can also be used on non-HD TVs).

The console hardware is based on a custom IBM PowerPC-based "Xenon" central processing unit (CPU) and a custom ATI "Xenos" graphics processing unit (GPU). It is equipped with 512 MB of RAM and uses the DVD-ROM storage medium for Xbox 360 game software.

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005 in United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, December 2 in Europe, December 10 in Japan, February 2, 2006 in Mexico and Colombia. It was released February 24 2006 in South Korea, and was released March 16, 2006 in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (Delayed from original March 2, 2006 launch date). It is now also available in Australia and New Zealand, after being delayed from 2 March 2006 to 23 March 2006.

Retail configurations and pricing

Microsoft's current retail strategy involves two different configurations of the Xbox 360 in most countries: the Xbox 360 SKU, frequently referred to as the "Xbox 360 Premium Package"; and an Xbox 360 Core System SKU. The Core System is not available in Japan, instead Microsoft offers a package identical to the Xbox 360 SKU for ¥37,900 ($323.90 as of 21 December 2005. The Xbox 360 Premium Edition is being sold in America for $399.99. Japanese pricing of the console has drawn some criticism, as customers there will be able to purchase the Xbox 360 full package, albeit one region-coded for Japan, for a lower price than in other countries.

Microsoft's decision has also allowed Japanese developers to fully utilize the hard drive to optimize game performance, since it is part of the default system configuration in their market. However because of the existence of a Core System edition, many games do not require a hard drive.

BusinessWeek magazine compiled a report which estimates that the total cost of all of the components in the "premium" bundle is $525 USD, aside from additional manufacturing costs, meaning that Microsoft is losing at least $126 on every Xbox 360 system sold in the US, and at least as much in Japan. The strategy of selling a console at a loss or near-loss is common in the console games industry, as console makers can usually expect to make up the for all custom hardware used in the Xbox 360, they can easily switch to new fabrication processes or change suppliers in the future in order to reduce manufacturing costs. This flexibility stands in contrast to the situation faced by the original Xbox, which contained a processor from Intel (a slightly modified Pentium III) and a GPU from NVidia (a modified GeForce 3). Both of these were very similar to "off the shelf" PC hardware and were therefore sold to Microsoft at inflated market prices. Because of these chips and the added expense of a hard drive component, Microsoft was never able to reduce the cost of manufacturing an Xbox below the break-even point. Microsoft's home entertainment division posted a loss through nearly every quarter of the console's lifecycle as a result. Microsoft hopes to avoid such a predicament with its new console, the company is predicting that a greater market share and falling hardware costs will make the Xbox 360 a profitable item.

It is of note that in some regions (like Australia and New Zealand), in the Xbox 360 "Premium Package" the Xbox-Live Headset was replaced with the Universal Media Remote. This could be due to the DVD remote for the original Xbox system being more a popular accessory than the Xbox Live Headset for the original Xbox in those regions. Read more here: Xbox 360 launches.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Xbox 360 ]

Games - Xbox 360

Retail configurations and pricing

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