After nearly 11 years of production, Microsoft announces that the Xbox 360 will be discontinued.
On May 16, 2005, the Xbox 360 was unveiled at the E3 Xbox Press Conference at the Shrine Auditorioum in Los Angeles, California by Senior Vice President and Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach as reported by Mashable. 11 years later, Xbox chief Phil Spencer announced on April 20 (Wednesday) that after manufacturing the Xbox 360 for over a decade, the production cease to continue according to the company's primary blog.
Connectivity and Xbox Live related services for current users of 360 will not be discontinued. The remaining 360 consoles will continue to be available for purchase in stores.
According to Ars Technica, Spencer did not specify how many Xbox 360 consoles were sold in its over one decade of product life. This is perhaps due to the fact that recent figures for Microsoft sales of Xbox One and Xbox 360 are not so great.
The latest sales number for the Xbox 360 gaming console can be traced back in 2014. During that time, Xbox 360 sales were up to 84 million.
The Xbox 360 was redesigned in 2010. However, Xbox 360's hardware went through several major revisions for the past years. Throughout the line's 11-year lifespan, Xbox 360 gaming consoles were made available in multiple configurations.
In 2007, Microsoft acknowledged a widespread Xbox 360 overheating issue. At the time, Microsoft implemented a first major motherboard revision called the Zephyr to rectify overheating. During the revision, the motherboard also featured and added HDMI support. Later in 2007, another revision of the motherboard was called Falcon and it introduced a 65mm CPU process.
The Xbox 360 S was launched in 2010. The upgraded model came with a built-in Kinect port and a 802.11n wireless adapter. This is the Xbox 360 model that was persevered until this week's announcement of ceasing the production. The only major hardware revision in the Xbox 360 S was made in 2011, involving a tweak to block a "reset glitch" hack and introducing a revised power supply.
The Xbox 360 was the first major living room gaming console to support Netflix on demand streaming. Many came to use the system more for video streaming than for online multiplayer games.
Throughout all those years, the Xbox 360 proved to be a great gaming platform. Now - with Spencer's announcement - the 360 system has officially came to its end.
