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 (console)
Despite a strong promotion in Japan, the country saw very poor sales (450,000 as of November 2011). Some analysts already believed that the Xbox would have trouble competing with Sony and Nintendo before its Japanese launch, claiming that the Xbox would be competing against its local counterparts and that the console does not fit well with Japanese society (e.g., console size), as well as the lack of Japanese-appealing launch titles, such as role-playing games. For the week ending April 14, 2002, the Xbox was by far outsold by its Sony and Nintendo rivals, as well as the WonderSwan and even the PSone. In November 2002, the Xbox chief in Japan stepped down, leading to further consultations about Xbox's future, which had by then sold just 278,860 units in the country since its February launch. For the week ending July 18, 2004, the Xbox sold just 272 units, which was so poor that even the PSone outsold it by four. The Xbox did, however, outsell the GameCube for the week ending May 26, 2002. Despite Microsoft's struggles, some Japanese-appealing games were released exclusively for the Xbox, such as "Dead or Alive 3" or "Ninja Gaiden", which hugely contributed to the sales of Xbox in Japan. Its successor Xbox 360 sold 1.6 million units as of February 2014.