These were the days. When I bought an Xbox 360, it changed my world forever

Usually as part of the cycle These were the days we focus on retro products, instead of describing the history of devices still covered by technical support. However, this article was created out of the heart's need. It has an emotional dimension.

Actually, the Xbox 360 wasn't my first gaming console. I started my adventure with electronic entertainment from the famous Pegasus, i.e. the Polish-Chinese fake NES. However, since I got the first PC based on the 486 chip with VGA graphics as a gift, consoles ceased to matter to me.

For many long years I played only on the PC, exchanging it twice. My second desktop was a computer based on the MMX Pentium. Third on Pentium 4. And I'd probably still play the so-called PC Master Race if it wasn't for the history of long and senseless expenses.

Forgive me, not an interesting personal thread for everyone, but I would like to talk about it briefly. The rest, please scroll to the next heading.

For a long time I despised consoles openly, but it wasn't blind aversion. In my youth, arcade games dominated on gaming consoles, most often converting titles from gaming machines. They didn't interest me at all. Where are the serious RPGs and shooters? Where are strategy games and pseudosimulators? And yes, I know they existed, but I was a prisoner of certain stereotypes.

One day, however, my computer - and more specifically its GPU - began to unpleasantly overheat. Cleaning from dust did not help, so I decided to invest in a decent housing, because until now I used the cheapest ATX booths. The Nzxt Hush case cost me about PLN 400 and ... it changed nothing. Somewhat confused, I started googling on the internet and found information that my Radeon 9800 Pro is actually overheating if it has insufficient voltage.

Pissed off by another expense, I bought a branded power supply with very high power. I don't remember the model, but it cost about PLN 500. So I have already spent almost a thousand on keeping Total War and World of Warcraft from a critical mistake. Of course it did not help, and in those years such an amount was a huge expense for me. Irritated by the turn of events, furious, I thought I had enough. Impulsively and in anger, I decided to give consoles a chance. I didn't think for a long time: PlayStation 3 had many problems at that time. Xbox 360 was the only sensible option.

It was one of the best decisions in my life. The fact I had to get used to playing the pad for a long time. And yes, the choice of console games in combination with the PC is much lower. However, there is something extremely refreshing in the fact that everything just works here. I'm not worried about tuning drivers for the game or other similar nonsense - this is the task of the game creator, not mine. This love continues to this day, although of course not with Xbox 360 - at home, Xbox One X is one of my favorite forms of spending free time. That is why I pointed to the Microsoft console as a gadget of the past decade .

The history of the Xbox 360 itself is of course much, much, much more interesting than my adventures. It's even good for a spy movie.

The Xbox 360 is the successor to the Xbox and a direct competitor of PlayStation 3. The first Microsoft console has proved to be a relative success, being a quite innovative piece of technology. It is the first Xbox that is credited with popularizing online games on consoles and putting on local memory instead of just reading from cartridges or an optical drive. The Xbox results are not even comparable with the legendary PlayStation 2. However, it turned out so well - image and commercial - that Microsoft decided to follow the blow. A stroke of luck and not entirely honest Sony contractor meant that the company had a unique chance to establish a real and equal fight with the successor of PS2. I mentioned that it will be sensational.

Sony had great ambitions towards PlayStation 3. The company decided to design the processor from scratch, from scratch, instead of relying on commercially available solutions and architectures. However, designing such complex and efficient integrated circuits requires a lot of time, money and experience. Sony was able to measure strength on intentions, which is why it decided to cooperate with more familiar companies.

In 2001, the company signed an agreement with Toshiba and IBM. The three companies were to jointly design the Cell processor, which was to be the heart of the PlayStation 3 console and which was to offer much greater possibilities for game developers than integrated circuits from personal computers. The project's budget is $ 400 million. Time allowed for work: 5 years. The budget did not take into account the costs of the technological process.

Meanwhile, in 2002, Microsoft began planning the successor to the Xbox. Like Sony, he knew it was time to design his own processor instead of relying on universal systems. By chance, the company also turned to IBM for help.

Having already had the first conceptual plans for Cella, he decided to show them to Microsoft.

The Xbox manufacturer adopted the project and started working with IBM to improve the processor for the Xbox 360 console. Formally, work was carried out in parallel. Informally, IBM used Sony's money and ideas to create solutions for Microsoft. In practice, Cella components, prototyped for Sony consoles, were then implemented into a processor to hit the Xbox 360.

There were many absurd situations. As we read in the book (I recommend!) The Race for a New Game Machine, which is a description of those events, IBM employees even covered the monitors with their bodies and meticulously made sure that nothing was left on the desk when they were not at the stands. All this so that the position next to their colleagues from Toshiba and Sony could not see what and who they are working on. Simply put, it can be assumed that PlayStation 3 was in effect a prototype, and Xbox 360 a refined second iteration.

Sony, Toshiba and IBM jointly prototyped, worked and developed the Cell processor for the money provided by the PlayStation manufacturer, and then IBM reduced costs by taking Microsoft money and refining what has already been developed together with Sony and Toshiba.

Sony had an additional bad luck.

Admittedly, IBM had no problems with getting to the deadlines and both processors had timely technological processes for factories, those factories had problems with the production of the first batch of these songs. Microsoft predicted this by outsourcing additional production to another factory. Sony lacked that sense, so it had to wait longer for its Celle.

So Microsoft had its processor ready to be installed in consoles faster than Sony had. He was also more refined and better documented. Although Sony was in practice responsible for this undertaking, the PlayStation 3 console had a delayed premiere compared to the original plans. Xbox 360 appeared on the market on time.

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005.

The central unit of the Xbox 360 was a 3-core PowerPC 3.2 GHz Xenon chip with 512 GB GDDR3 RAM 700 MHz and an ATI Xenos 500 MHz graphics chip and Dolby Digital 5.1 compatible sound module. Network connectivity - the hallmark of the Xbox - was the Gigabit Ethernet module and a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi card. In the absence of competition, it immediately proved to be a great success among hungry new players. But beyond the impressive technical foundation, Xbox 360 had more to offer.

Already the first Xbox drew attention to great, created only for this platform (at least among consoles games). Particularly noteworthy was the Halo shooter, today considered one of the most important items in the history of the genre and on the basis of which network shooters are still created today. PlayStation 2 fans have heard of these supposedly great games from the first Xbox. Looking forward to PlayStation 3 they decided just because of not give Microsoft console a chance. Especially that there were a lot of these games, and more were announced. Impressive was Forza Motorsport boldly competing with the iconic Gran Turismo or EA Sports games operating in HD resolution at 60 fps.

But that's not the end. The Xbox 360 not only had an impressive exclusive game base - amongst the new brands it's worth mentioning even the brilliant Gears of War - but also overwhelmed developers so far associated with Sony. Games such as Devil May Cry 4, Ace Combat 6, Virtua Fughter 5, Grand Theft Auto IV, Final Fantasy XIII, Tekken 6, Metal Gear Solid: Rising and LA Noire were originally planned as exclusive games on PlayStation 3. High sales Xbox 360, its technical capabilities, ease of programming and suitcases with dollars from Microsoft meant that it was the giant console from Redmond that was the target platform - with a possible port on PlayStation 3 or even without it.

Attention was also drawn to very extensive network functions. Xbox 360 could be connected to the second-generation Xbox Live network, which, in principle, at the same time was not unmatched by the convenience and ease of use at the time. A significant innovation was also a store that allows you to buy games in digital versions, and the so-called Achievements - i.e. rewards for special results in games - were copied by the entire industry. Including by Sony in the form of Trophies later introduced.

All this translated into huge commercial success, and the demand for Xbox 360 has long exceeded supply. Suddenly, the first 1.5 million consoles went to the hands of players. The lead was maintained for quite a long time: in May 2008, Xbox 360 was the first to cross the barrier of 10 million sold consoles of the then generation. Only at the end of that generation, PlayStation 3 finally managed to catch up - and overtake - Microsoft's product. Competition was (until then, it changed) too expensive and had too little game selection. What's more, Microsoft took care of extensive documentation and convenient development tools, which translated into the fact that multiplatform games usually looked better on the Xbox 360, which was not due to its advantage in computing power.

Nerd section. What could he do from the technical side of Xbox 360?

Xenon is a three-core 64-bit processor built on the PowerPC architecture. It was characterized by high performance in floating point operations due to numerous arithmetic coprocessors (FPUs) and SIMD type vector (more specifically, VMX128 modules supporting support of compressed data from Direct3D API). Each of the cores supported multi-threaded data processing and was clocked at 3.2 GHz. Originally, it was manufactured using a 90-nanometer process, although in later versions of the console a 65-nanometer unit was already present, and in a later 45-nanometer. The system was accompanied by a megabyte of L2 cache shared between three cores.

In turn, the Xenos graphics system consisted of two 90-nanometer modules clocked at 500 MHz with 10 MB eDRAM memory and hardware modules accelerating edge smoothing (4x MSAA), buffer with alpha blending. The operating memory of the Xbox 360 is 512 MB GDDR3 RAM 700 MHz connected by a 128-bit data bus and shared between the CPU and GPU. The sound system supported up to 256 channels with 32-bit precision and a hardware decoder for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio playback.

The first versions of the console were devoid of HDMI connectors, relying on compontent video. Later also offered this connector. The maximum image resolution that Xbox 360 could generate was 1080p, although due to performance limitations, most games worked at 720p and even lower pixel-scaled HD. The Xbox 360 optical drive is a DVD drive with a bandwidth of 15.85 MB / s. It has also been possible to buy an external HD DVD drive exclusively for movies since 2006. However, due to the collapse of this format in favor of Blu-ray, it has not gained much popularity. The drive for Xbox 360 is today one of the few methods to play movies saved on this medium. Unfortunately, the Microsoft console never got a Blu-ray drive.

The storage of Xbox 360 consoles was 2.5 inch HDD SATA. Unfortunately, he used proprietary firmware and custom connectors, which meant that replacing the factory disk with a larger one bought for a PC was deliberately difficult, theoretically impossible. The cheapest Xbox 360 (Arcade or Core version) did not offer a hard drive, although it could be purchased at a later date. This caused some problems: some games, fortunately for the few console users, required installation to local memory. The other consoles were available in versions with 20-, 60-, 120-, 250- and 500-gigabyte disks, although the lightest varieties appeared long after the release of the first version of the console.

7 GB of storage was reserved by the Xbox 360 operating system, of which 4 GB is a game cache and 2 GB are libraries that allow running games from the previous generation of Xbox. The whole was complemented by three USB 2.0 connectors (in later versions their number was increased to five) and a 2.4 GHz wireless communication module for wireless controllers.

Contrary to popular belief, the Xbox 360 operating system did not have much in common with Windows, although it was largely compatible with the DirectX API. However, it allowed for far-reaching personalization and was very responsive. It also allowed the installation of multimedia applications and was compatible with Windows Media Center. It also supported playback of DVD-Video, DVR-MS, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 and WMV content.

Xbox 360 has numerous accessories. Kinect seems to be the most important.

Microsoft has provided players with many numerous additions to their console, including the ability to buy colored covers for enclosures, various controllers or even dance game mats. Nothing, however, caught the attention of such a large number of people as Kinect. This one was released much later - it was announced on June 1, 2009 - and was a response to the unexpected and huge success of Nintendo Wii console motion controllers. A very effective answer.

Kinect did not require players to hold any manipulator in their hands. The accessory recorded all of the player's movements just like that . And although it did not do it in a highly precise way (sometimes it was even frustratingly unreliable), the world went crazy about it - Kinect at the peak of its popularity sold better than Apple's hottest products.

The Xbox 360 gamepad is also worth the extra attention, as it turned out to be a brilliant project. Its asymmetrical shape and button layout (two joysticks, a d-pad, four function buttons, two bumpers, two triggers, two control buttons and a system Xbox button) is considered a role model. Not everyone shares this view - DualShock from Sony is also highly praised. However, it is the Xbox Controller has gained the largest number of followers, and its essence has not changed in subsequent generations of Microsoft consoles.

During its entire existence, Xbox 360 was available in as many as five different variations - not counting its subversions.

They were:

• Xbox 360 Core without HDD and HDMI connectors.
• The Xbox 360 Pro, which could be purchased with a 20- or 60-gigabyte hard drive, and a version with or without an HDMI connector
• Xbox 360 Arcade with 256- or 512-megabyte disk and HDMI connector
• Xbox 360 Elite with 120- or 250-gigabyte disk and HDMI connector
• Xbox 360 S with 4-, 250- or 320-gigabyte disk and HDMI connector

There have also been numerous occasional custom versions for collectors.

Not much was missing, and the Xbox 360 would disappear from the market even faster as it appeared. Steve Ballmer saved the project in the face of a catastrophic crisis.

It is said that karma returns. The advantage that Microsoft provided insight into work on PlayStation 3 almost did not matter. Already after the console went on sale, it turned out that all its first production batches contain a hardware fault. Let's emphasize: all without exception. This, in turn, meant that every single Xbox 360 sold sooner or later had to break down. And relatively shortly after its first launch.

The fault manifested itself as an error described in the manual as General Hardware Failure, and the message indicating it was red glowing LEDs around the power button. The gaming community called this error RRoD (Red Ring of Death). For the second time to emphasize: every console from the first production batches had to break down. Each. Try to imagine the scale of the problem and huge image losses.

As it turned out later, the problem turned out to be the cooling system, It was not detected in the tests of console prototypes, because one of the changes was introduced shortly before starting production. It was a new European Union law requiring the use of copper-free solders. The new material has not been sufficiently tested for resistance to prolonged exposure to high temperatures. February was playing, and integrated circuits detached from the motherboard.

According to the memories of Peter Moore, then the vice president of Microsoft's electronic entertainment department, the Xbox team was terrified. Everyone was convinced that this is the end of their adventure with the gaming consoles market and with Microsoft. According to the initial cost estimate, the cost of sending couriers to customers with defective consoles was a dizzying quarter billion dollars. The exact record of Moore's memories was once published by Eurogamer , or you can read about them in the book The Race for a New Game Machine. Below is an excerpt (my translation):

Moore, pale and terrified, went to meet Steve Ballmer, then president of Microsoft - who is hardly known for his mild temperament. - He asked me how much the entire Xbox 360 rescue operation would cost. I took a deep breath and replied: some $ 1.15 billion. Ballmer replied without a wink: "Well, let's go" and went back to his classes. He made the decision in the blink of an eye, instead of sinking this disaster and sacking us all, which would be logical and reasonable. If it wasn't for him, there wouldn't be an Xbox One and an Xbox platform today .

Microsoft has replaced all defective consoles at its expense, and has extended the warranty period to three years regardless of the condition of the console. Particular emphasis was placed so that the entire replacement process - in the door-to-door system - does not last longer than three weeks. The company also issued an official apology. As history proves, that was enough. Xbox 360, despite the nightmare just after its birth, became one of the favorite platforms of its generation, only at the end of its life cycle giving way to PlayStation 3.

I have to confess to you: I'm a fan.

People who write in the media are required to have cool impartiality. This is not difficult for me in most cases. I do not identify with any product, programming language, hardware or operating platform. These are products, sometimes good and sometimes bad. I chose my specialization at Spider's Web - looking at Microsoft - as a result of cold calculations, recognizing that it is an interesting career path and a corporation that you can always write a lot of interesting things about.

However, Xbox is an exception. Since I am a member of Xbox Live, I have also become a big fan of what Microsoft does in video games. I am a fan and - I admit - I am quite emotional about the successes and failures of this platform. However, I spent thousands of hours with her, almost always playing absolutely perfectly. Xbox has always had a very open, pro-consumer and programming approach. Not always everything went well, such as the poor beginnings of Xbox One. However, I have always been more than compensated as a player. Great equipment, excellent services and a brilliant (yes, yes!) Video game catalog made me a platform enthusiast. And I admit I can't wait for the Xbox Series X.

These were the days. When I bought an Xbox 360, it changed my world forever