Xbox 360 Consoles, Games and Accessories

Following on from the original Xbox in early 2006, the Xbox 360 was up against the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii (with both the 360 and PS3 still seeing new title releases even though their successor consoles are on the market – Microsoft has stated they intend to support the 360 until 2016).

Very similar to the PlayStation 3 in terms of multimedia capabilities, the Xbox 360 allowed gamers to purchase and download games, watch DVDs, stream music, watch TV and movies, and stream media files from their PC over a local network. Early consoles were subject to a technical fault popularly titled the ‘Red Ring of Death’, which meant the console had to be sent in for repair – Microsoft released two hardware revisions of the console in 2010 and 2013 that were not as prone to these errors.

The 360 was the first of Microsoft’s consoles to feature the Kinect peripheral (which was released five years after the 360’s launch), allowing gamers to play without using a controller, instead using their body movement and voice commands. A Windows-compatible version of Kinect was released in 2012. It was also the console that saw the first instalment of the Gears of War franchise, as well as continuing the expanding the universe of Master Chief with instalments including Halo 3 and Halo 4.

Although it didn’t come out on top of its gaming generation, the 360 managed to sell over 80 million units worldwide by the end of 2013 – about the same number as the PS3, and behind the Wii’s tally of over 100 million.