Xbox
The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, February 22, 2002, in Japan, and March 14, 2002, in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast (which stopped American sales before the Xbox went on sale), and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The name Xbox was derived from a contraction of "DirectX Box", a reference to Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX.
Xbox 360 controller
The Xbox 360 controller received positive reviews when it was released. Before then, as IGN stated, the original Xbox controller was "huge, ugly, cheap, and uncomfortable" and concluded to be an "abomination". Many of these problems were corrected with Microsoft's releases of the Xbox controller S and then the Xbox 360 controller. IGN credited the Xbox 360 controller for its being one of "the most ergonomically comfortable console controllers around". It was also praised for its improved button placement, its functioning logo as a button, and Microsoft's choice of bottom-mounting headset ports as opposed to top-mounting them so as to minimize snagged wire problems.