Never a company to do anything small, Microsoft launched the much-anticipated Xbox gaming device in New York City's Time Square, handing out the first device at 12:01 a.m. on November 15, 2001. But besides the hype and frenzy of people actually camping out to purchase one of these gaming devices, what is so special about the Xbox aside from the Microsoft name?

Well, let's take first things first. What can it do? Powered by a 733 MHz Intel Pentium III processor on top of a 250 MHz 3-D graphics processing unit (XGPU) from nVidia, chances are this small box has much more power than the PC sitting on your desk. And that graphics processor processes 125 million polygons per second, 4 gigapixels per second, and a total of 1 trillion operations per second, which means you are going to see some pretty advanced graphics while you're trying to save the world from annihilation. In addition, its Media Communications processor (MCPX) from nVidia will support 64-channel positional audio and Dolby Digital encoding, allowing you to send your game sound to a home stereo.

The Xbox comes with 64 MB of unified memory, an internal 8 GB hard drive to save game information, and an 8 MB removable memory card. It has a front-loading DVD player; however, you will have to purchase a separate remote control to play back DVD movies. The console has an audio/video connector to hook up to a television or home theater system and a 10/100 Ethernet port. This Ethernet port is the key to connecting you, a single game player, to thousands of game players all over the world as long as you have a broadband Internet connection. And, of course, the console has ports for the game controllers -- four of them, to be exact.

The game controller is the result of thousands of hours of testing and customer research, resulting in an eight-way directional pad, with left and right analog buttons, four main buttons on the front, and two rear shoulder triggers. The buttons and triggers are pressure-sensitive, translating into finer control for the player. The controller also has built-in "rumble" feedback for greater realism.

Pricing and Availability

The Xbox is, ahem, "currently available" at a price of $299. But good luck finding one.

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