The Xbox 360 is a powerful next-gen videogame system from Microsoft that was released on November 22nd, 2005. Currently, the Xbox 360 comes in several different configurations and prices ranging from $280 to $450.

The Xbox 360 can play both Xbox 360 games as well as DVD movies right out of the box. The system can also play certain titles that were released on the original Xbox. For a complete list of backward compatable titles, please check the official list at Xbox.com.

A major feature of the Xbox 360 is that it is the first true high definition videogame system. An HDTV is not required to enjoy everything that the Xbox 360 has to offer, but if you do have an HDTV the graphics are greatly enhanced over what we saw in the PS3/Xbox/GameCube era.

Another major feature is the Xbox Live online services. There are two different versions of Live - Gold which lets you play games online against other people, and Silver which lets you download demos, trailers, Xbox Live Arcade games, and chat with friends. A key feature of Xbox Live is that it is a central service that lets you use just one nickname (called a Gamertag) across each and every game and it also lets you keep a list of friends and preferred people you like to play with. Xbox Live isn't required to enjoy what the Xbox 360 has to offer, but the experience is greatly enhanced when you take the system online.

Here is the Xbox 360 in all of its glory. The rumored design details that the system would use wireless controllers as well as the concave design are present. There is also an extra button beside the memory card slots as well as a covered port on the right side of the system whose functions are not yet known at this time. 

Custom IBM Power-PC Based CPU

Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total

VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total

128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread

1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance

9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

500MHz processor

10 MB of embedded DRAM

48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines

Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance

500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate

16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Shader Performance

48 billion shader operations per second

512 MB of GDDR3 RAM

700 MHz of DDR

Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth

22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth

256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM

21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating Point Performance

1 teraflop

Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive

12x dual-layer DVD-ROM

Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB

Support for up to four wireless game controllers

Three USB 2.0 ports

Two memory unit slots

Optimized for Online

Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music

Built-in Ethernet port

Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g

Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD

Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs

Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive

Custom playlists in every game

Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Game Support

All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing

Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Multi-channel surround sound output

Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio

320 independent decompression channels

32-bit audio processing

Over 256 audio channels

System Orientation

Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates

Interchangeable to personalize the console