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)
In 2002 and 2003, several high-profile releases helped the Xbox gain momentum and distinguish itself from the PS2. Microsoft purchased Rare, responsible for many Nintendo 64 hit games, to expand their 1st party portfolio. The Xbox Live online service was launched in late 2002 alongside pilot titles "MotoGP", "MechAssault" and "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon". Several best-selling and critically acclaimed titles for the Xbox soon followed, such as "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell", and "". Take-Two Interactive's exclusivity deal with Sony was amended to allow "Grand Theft Auto III" and its sequels to be published for the Xbox. Many other publishers got into the trend of releasing the Xbox version alongside the PS2 version, instead of delaying it for months.