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.
Video game accessory
The Xbox system was sold with a new type of data storage for consoles: an internal hard drive to store information. The hard drive was 8 GB and was used as more than just a memory device. It was used in conjunction with the games to buffer some of the game data so that loading times were decreased. The hard drive also stored downloadable content from the Xbox Live service. Since the Xbox precedent, the PlayStation 2 had a hard drive accessory used with the Final Fantasy XI game to store character data. In the new generation of game consoles the PlayStation 3 is included with one of many different sized hard drives, depending on which model of the console is purchased, the 20 GB, 40 GB, 60 GB, and 80 GB models, or 120 or 250 GB for the PS3 Slim. The Xbox 360 launched with a 20 GB hard drive. After users started to complain of lack of space due to HD content, Microsoft released a 120 GB drive bundled with their Elite model, and available for individual sale.