The Great American Console

Seeing as how it’s Independence Day, we thought it would be nifty to have a quick look at the most successful American made console in history, our beloved Xbox. What follows is a quick overview of the console, the games, and its impact on the gaming landscape.

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Seeing as how it’s Independence Day, we thought it would be nifty to have a quick look at the most successful American made console in history, our beloved Xbox. What follows is a quick overview of the console, the games, and its impact on the gaming landscape.

The Hardware:

Initial reactions were somewhat sceptical, rumors of the machines ability to kill a small child if toppled raced across the net and appeared in print mags, and few denied the fact that the console was anything but sexy. Still, the Xbox made a statement, it was large, but it had some serious horsepower under the hood. While many PlayStation and Gamecube fans are loathed to admit it, the big black babe absolutely trounced Nintendo’s entry, and ran circles around the PlayStation 2’s graphical abilities. It wasn’t just the fact that it could make it’s polygons look better, the Xbox offered better overall picture quality, with most of its games capable of running in progressive scan mode, producing a sharper, clearer picture.

Much was made of the Xbox’s use of “off the shelf pc parts” such as it’s modified Nvidia Geforce 3 graphics processing unit, or its 733Mhz processor, and even the hard drive, but in the end Microsoft proved their decisions were smart ones. Not only did the Xbox’s GPU and CPU architecture keep its games competitive over the span of its lifetime, the hard drive enabled users to get rid of memory cards, and lower load times for many games as well as offering the possibility for gamers to play custom soundtracks. But Microsoft’s inclusion of the hard drive also facilitated the advent of something much more revolutionary, but we’ll come to that in a minute.

Xbox Live:

On November 15th 2002, Microsoft rolled out its broadband only Xbox Live service, which promised to give console gamers a similar experience to what PC fans had been enjoying for years. Xbox Live gave subscribers the chance to play against other opponents the world over, as well as offered them the opportunity to download additional content to supplement the games they owned, such as levels, new play modes, characters, items and much more.

Many agree that Xbox Live has been Microsoft’s most significant contribution to the gaming landscape, and its effects can even be seen in Sony’s efforts to restructure their online service in such a manner that it mimics the features and services that Live offers. As we move into the next generation with the Xbox 360, Live continues to grow and evolve, becoming a more integral part of not just the Xbox experience, but gaming as a whole.

The Games:

In a relatively short span of time Microsoft has been able to court developers by offering them the tools, money and the environment they need to make some truly great games. A powerful machine and an innovative online service are one thing, but if you haven’t got the games to back it up, it’s the end of the line. Microsoft have since proven that they easily have what it takes to compete. Let’s have a look at three of the landmark titles in the  green giants library.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Franchise games are the easiest thing in the world to screw up, all you have to do is disrespect the subject matter. BioWare took the traditional RPG formula, stripped it down to it’s bones, and built the Star Wars universe up around it with reverence and respect.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series: That Sam Fisher distinguished himself and moved out of the shadow of Solid Snake is compliment enough. While the series may not be Xbox exclusive, the Xbox versions have traditionally been the only ones worth owning. Sporting advanced lighting and shading, gripping geopolitical storylines, fantastic gameplay that truly married the Xbox’s power, and a humanised character, the Splinter Cell series went a long way to validating the Xbox’s stance as a premiere gaming machine. It also helps that the newest games in the series are an absolute hoot to play over Xbox Live.

Halo: Whoops! Almost forgot this one! No, not really. Halo is a legitimate phenomenon, Bungie took a simple “heavy armored marine” concept, and crafted an intriguing storyline, with fast frantic gameplay around it to produce a winning formula. Even more than Splinter Cell, the Halo games longevity can best be attributed to their amazing playability over Xbox Live.

The Next generation:

Still in its infancy, the Xbox 360 has already broken just about every sales record its predecessor set, its attractive price and continually growing stable of games, not to mention the ever evolving Xbox Live platform are enticing even more gamers. With titles such as Gears of War, Halo 3, Lost Planet and Blue Dragon on the horizon, the Xbox franchise looks to have a long life ahead of it.