Welcome, to week two of the most amazing (and only) five-week series of editorials that has ever graced Lusipurr.com. In just three weeks and a few days, the Nintendo Switch will have released to either bless local retailers with the innovation of portable gaming, or plague the consumer with an overpriced console that only has about three good games available on launch. Last week was SEGA consoles, and this week will be about the extensive amount of consoles that Microsoft has released. First the worst, second the best, and third the one with a hairy chest? Huh. Well either way, it is time to start with Microsoft’s first console: the Xbox.
Adeki has been around longer than Microsoft has in the video game console industry.
Yes, the Xbox, released all the way back in November of 2001 in North America, would go on to sell over 24 million units in just five years. While this is a small number in comparison to the lifetime sales of the Playstation 2, it is about three million units higher than lifetime sales of the Nintendo Gamecube, and obviously it was enough to warrant a second console. It also marked the first time a video game console was created by an American company since the Atari Jaguar which did…not great. The original Xbox also featured online play through Xbox Live which was announced just a year after the console’s initial release, and while it was not the first to do so Xbox Live did prove to become extremely popular thanks to help from first-person shooters like Halo 2. Of course the Xbox also launched with the first “Halo” title, Halo: Combat Evolved, alongside Dead or Alive 3 and Oddworld; Munch’s Oddysee. Thanks to this success, it only made sense for Microsoft to create a second console which is now known as, drumroll please, the Xbox 360!
The biggest mistake was not naming it Xbox 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Just four years and over 24 million units sold the Xbox’s initial launch in North America, Microsoft released the Xbox 360 on November 22nd, 2005 in North America for the price of $300 for the Core edition or $400 for the Premium edition (with Europe and Japan getting the console just a month afterwards). The Xbox 360 launched with killer titles such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie and Call of Duty 2. Believe it or not, Call of Duty 2 was the best-selling title out of the festive bounty that was ripe for the metaphysical picking. Another thing to note is that Xbox 360 production only started 69 (ha) days before launch, which then led to not nearly enough Xbox 360 consoles being available anywhere aside from Japan where Xbox consoles do not do as well. Over time though, the Xbox 360 went on to sell over 80 million units in various designs and roughly tied with the Playstation 3 in terms of sales (seemingly a 200,000 unit difference in the Xbox’s favor as of 2015), but both ended up losing out to the far more popular Nintendo Wii.
Note, this is the Xbox One but not the first Xbox because Microsoft hates conventional naming.
Last but not least is the Xbox One which released worldwide, eight years after the Xbox 360’s North American launch, on November 22nd, 2013 for the price of $500. Right off the bat Microsoft decided to deal some heavy hitters out with the Xbox One’s release such as Call of Duty: Ghosts, Dead Rising 3, and Zumba Fitness: World Party (not kidding). In total there were over 20 titles available upon the Xbox One’s launch, and according to Microsoft themselves, the Xbox One sold more that one million units within the first 24 hours of the console being available. So far the Xbox One in its multiple forms has sold about 28 million units, beating the Wii U by over 15 million but still losing to the PS4 by over 20 million units as well. Will the Xbox One S or the Project Scorpio do amazingly well and somehow overtake Sony in the console game? Probably not, but pretend like the answer to half that question will be answered in next week’s editorial all about Sony’s console launches.
So that is it for this week, tune in next time for an editorial about Sony’s launch days with the various Playstation consoles. Did you own a Microsoft console at launch? What do you think? Or maybe you have suggestions as to what to cover, either way, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!