![]() ![]() With that kind of information now public knowledge, the first Xbox modchip came up for sale in May of 2002. Voicemail from Microsoft representative regarding Huang’s student webpage He was flirting with fire, because a mere twelve hours after the post he received a cold call from a Microsoft representative. Huang had extracted the Xbox’s BIOS image and posted it for anyone on the Internet to download. He detailed how to extract the TSOP flash chip from the motherboard along with insights into the contents within. The week after the launch, Xbox owners got an early Christmas present from MIT student Andrew “bunnie” Huang who published his exploits into tinkering with the console. The Xbox played games, played music, and with purchase of a proprietary IR remote dongle, it also played DVD movies. It was intended to introduce home theater PCs to the masses. Microsoft incorporated DirectX, their collection of Windows APIs, into their machine which is where the console derived its namesake. The console was more PC-like than any console that had come before it, featuring an eight gig hard drive, Intel Pentium III CPU, and cutting-edge DVD-ROM drive. Nearly two years after the world failed to end, Microsoft launched the Xbox on Novemin North America. – Chris Morris, CNN Staff Writer I Know Bunnie-Fu “ launches war against Sony for control of the living room.” ![]() That new competitor was Microsoft, an American company playing in a Japanese company’s game. On the tail of Sony announcing the technical specs on their machine, rumors of a new competitor entering the “console wars” began to spread. Their heavy cloud of influence over gamers meant that the next generation of games wasn’t going to start in until the PS2 was on store shelves. They had already sold more units of the original PlayStation than all of their competition combined. Sony was poised to take control of the videogame console market once again. We were torn between anxiety - the impending Y2K bug bringing the end of civilization that Prince prophesied - and anticipation: the forthcoming release of the PlayStation 2. Unconventional popstars like Moby supplied electronica to the mainstream airwaves while audiences contemplated whether computers were the true enemy after seeing The Matrix. The turning of the millenium permeated every facet of pop culture. The millennium: a term that few had any use for before 1999, yet seemingly overnight it was everywhere. ![]()
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