Xbox 360 Games

The Xbox 360 launched with 18 titles in North America, 15 in Europe and 6 in Japan, including titles such as Perfect Dark Zero (the console's flagship launch title), Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Ridge Racer 6 (not in Europe), Tetris: The Grandmaster Ace (only in Japan) and NBA 2K6 (only in North America). Call of Duty 2 (not available at launch in Japan) went on to become the console's best selling game for 2005, selling over a million copies. In the console's first year, only five other games sold this amount: Dead or Alive 4, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Gears of War and Saints Row.

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) of 2006, Microsoft showcased a number of new games, including Halo 3 (the sequel to the original Xbox's best selling game), Too Human, Mass Effect and Fable 2 (a sequel to the Xbox's best-selling RPG). It was announced at this time that several Microsoft services would be integrated into one entity with Live Anywhere, to enable multiplayer games and communication between the Xbox 360 and the Windows Vista operating system for the PC. Shadowrun was the first game announced to be compatible with Live Anywhere. Other new and upcoming titles included Splinter Cell: Conviction, Banjo-Kazooie 3 and Halo Wars, along with sequels to some of the more successful franchises on the original Xbox, such as Fuzion Frenzy 2, Project Gotham Racing 3 & 4 and Forza Motorsport 2.

Backward Compatibility

The Xbox 360 is designed to be backwards compatible with the original system through software emulation. Emulated games are rendered in 720p, 1080i or 1080p HD resolution with anti-aliasing enabled, offering graphical enhancements to the original Xbox standards of 480p. Due to the system's greater memory bandwidth, some games also benefit from an improvement in the rendered draw distance. However there are some games that do not perform well in emulation, often exhibiting a lower framerate on the Xbox 360.

In order to play original Xbox games, players must download an emulation profile to their hard drive through Xbox Live or by ordering an update disc from Microsoft. Approximately 30% of the total Xbox game library is currently backward compatible in the US and Europe; with substantially less available in Japan. However, it is Microsoft's eventual goal to make the entire Xbox library playable on the Xbox 360.

Notable Xbox 360 Games

Since the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005, there have been many highly critically-acclaimed games released, in almost every game genre. Some of the most highly acclaimed include: