Collection: Microsoft Xbox Games

The original Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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.

The integrated Xbox Live service launched in November 2002 allowed players to play games online with or without a broadband connection. It first competed with Sega Dreamcast's online service but later primarily competed with Sony PlayStation 2's online service. Although these two are free while Microsoft Xbox Live required a subscription, as well as broadband-only connection which was not completely adopted yet, Microsoft Xbox Live was a success due to better servers, features such as a buddy list, and milestone titles like Halo 2 released in November 2004, which is the best-selling Microsoft Xbox video game and was by far the most popular online game for the system.