Xbox



"Life is short. Play more."

The original behemoth. The most powerful system of the 6th generation. It lead the way in console design by basically being a PC in a box. Helped pioneer online gaming with Xbox Live and its built-in Ethernet port. Since the system was very similar to PCs of the time, it received a bunch of direct ports to/from the platform that are missing on competing systems. Most multiplatform games of the 6th generation tended to have their best versions here since the system was very powerful. They also sometimes included some extras not on other systems. It's also hueg.

Due to the deal Microsoft made with Nvidia over the system's GPU, they would never make a profit off the system. Due to this, MS unceremoniously stopped production and rushed its successor out the door after only 4 years on the market. It didn't dethrone its main competitor (the PS2), but did help establish the ground for the 360's domination in the 7th gen.

Unlike the PS2 and GameCube, emulating the Xbox on PCs is not ready for primetime. There are a few emulators in development that can run some of the more popular games decently, but if you want the best experience, you'll want to get a system. There are other options for playing its games though.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Most Xbox systems (v1.0-1.5) have a bad capacitor that will eventually leak. When it does, it could kill your system by having battery acid eat away at the board traces. If you have an Xbox or get one, you should remove the capacitor AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!! Desoldering it is the best method but just wiggling it until the legs break works as well. Do note that the latter method could leak battery acid. You can replace it, but it's not necessary. All it does it keeps the time of the system clock. If you have a softmodded system, XBMC4XBOX and other custom dashboards can update the system time at launch if you have it connected to the internet. The last revision of the system (1.6) doesn't have this issue but its not as common as the previous revisions. You'll want to look up where the capacitor is since it differs per Xbox revision.

Concerning Xbox Live: On April 15, 2010, MS suspended Xbox LIVE support for all Original Xbox titles. You can't play online games or download downloadable content packs. If you're looking for an online game to play on your Original Xbox, you're out of luck. Try a tunneling program for online gaming if you're desperate, such as XBConnect or Xlink Kai to emulate a LAN game. Shitsux. The author of the PC emulator Cxbx-Reloaded is working on Insignia, an Xbox Live replacement, but it's still in development.

Backwards Compatibility
The Xbox 360's backwards compatibility with original Xbox games is an absolute mess. The games are emulated, so many suffer from technical hiccups. Not all games are even supported! If you're planning on playing these games on your Xbox 360 rather than the original Xbox, check this list to make sure it plays fine, if at all. In most cases, playing on an original Xbox will give you a far better experience overall. Games often have shorter load times on 360 due to the faster disc drive and hard drive, but worse performance in every other way.

For a time, Microsoft indicated there wasn't going to be OG Xbox support for the Xbox One. In fall of 2017, they started rolling out backward compatibility for original Xbox games. MS only released 41 compatible titles before putting on the breaks to focus on backwards compatibility for the Xbox Series X. All titles released up to that point were compatible with the 360 as well, but some added later aren't. Unlike the 360, all titles thus far seem to run as good as playing on original hardware, sometimes even better. The graphics are usually slightly better than they would be on stock hardware. On the Xbox One S and Series S, they run at four times the resolution (1280x960), while on the Xbox One X and Series X they run at sixteen times the resolution (2560x1920) and with 16x anisotropic filtering.

This icon indicates that a game is Xbox One compatible.

Hacking
If you own a system now of days, you'll probably want to hack it. It's pretty easy to hack and there's a ton of advantages to do so.
 * Upgrading your HDD
 * Backing up your games to the HDD and running them from it (or pirating games)
 * Run Emulators (everything through 5th Gen (minus Saturn) runs pretty well, arcade games) and Homebrew (AvP2000, Doom, Quake I & II, Half-Life, Stepmania, Super Mario War)
 * Custom Dashboards (XBMC4XBOX, Unleashed X)
 * Add more RAM or replace the CPU for double clock speeds. Not supper common, but these mods do improve emulation and homebrew performance. You might need to patch your retail games to have them run. The extra ram does allow you to run Sega Chihiro arcade games like Virtua Cop 3.

There's a wide variety of methods to mod your system. The most common (and easiest) is a softmod. Follow this video or visit here and you should be good to go.