Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 was Microsoft’s entry into the seventh generation of consoles, where it competed with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and the extremely successful Nintendo Wii. It sold over 84 million units, an impressive result despite some serious setbacks. Early consoles suffered from a common hardware failure known as the “Red Ring of Death”, mostly caused by heat and poor cooling breaking the connections between the main chips and the motherboard.

Given how hard the original Xbox proved to emulate, Xbox 360 emulation once seemed far-fetched. The Xenia project changed that: it can now run many Xbox 360 games, a growing number of them at full speed.

The Xbox 360 greatly improved on Microsoft’s online service, which became a core part of the console after Xbox Live’s success in the previous generation. It also had strong media centre features. Unlike the PlayStation 3, however, it used a DVD drive. Microsoft later released an HD DVD add-on for films, but HD DVD lost the format war to Blu-ray.

Ultimately the Xbox 360 was a very successful console. While it was not the best seller of its generation, it was home to some of the most memorable games of the era, including the Gears of War series, which became a pillar of Xbox gaming alongside the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon racing series.