The original Xbox came out in North America on November 15, 2001. Microsoft was getting into a console business that already had some very established names, and Halo: Combat Ev…

The original Xbox came out in North America on November 15, 2001. Microsoft was getting into a console business that already had some very established names, and Halo: Combat Evolved gave people a reason to pay attention immediately. That game became a huge part of Xbox's identity, but the launch also had Project Gotham Racing, Dead or Alive 3, and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee. You had racing, fighting, and that whole science-fiction world in Halo right from the beginning. It was a pretty clear statement about the kinds of games Microsoft wanted people playing on this thing. The hardware also matters when you look back at it. A hard drive and an Ethernet port were built into the console, so Microsoft already had the pieces in place for a much more connected system. Xbox Live followed in November 2002, and that became one of the biggest parts of Xbox's history. Then Halo 2 came along in 2004 and gave that online community a major game to gather around. By early 2005, Microsoft was reporting tens of millions of hours of Halo 2 played on Live. That tells you how quickly online multiplayer had become central to what people were doing on Xbox.