Xbox at 20, in the words of the people who made its first games

Two decades on, developers for its original launch talk about creating games for Microsoft's debut console

Twenty years since the launch of the original Xbox, its manufacturer Microsoft remains the new kid on the block: no new competitor has entered the home games console field since. Before 2001, Sega and Nintendo were the main competitors to Sony's ascendant PlayStation. Microsoft shoved both aside to eventually become Sony's direct rival, and the battle for the space beneath your TV continues to this day.

What separated the Xbox from other consoles of the time was not the power of its hardware or the appeal of its infamously chunky, almost brutalist design. It was the relationship between it, and the developers who made its games. The Xbox was easier to make games for than Sony's or Nintendo's consoles, and Microsoft went to previously unheard-of lengths to ensure that the Xbox's launch titles were as strong as they could be.