Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Xbox console launched on the 15th of November 2002. This launch date marked the beginning of Xbox Live, the first online gaming service to allow subscribers to play online Xbox games with other subscribers around the world.
Four Microsoft engineers named Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Ted Hase, and Otto Berkes built the original Xbox console. These engineers were part of the DirectX team and secretly began the project in 1999 under the codename Midway.
The Xbox console uses a 32-bit 733 MHz Intel Pentium III Coppermine-based processor. This processor was paired with an Nvidia GeForce 3-based GPU to provide powerful graphics capabilities for the system.
The Xbox console sold 24 million units worldwide. Despite these sales, Microsoft lost an accumulative total of $4 billion from the Xbox before managing to turn a profit at the end of 2004.
The Xbox 360 console was officially announced on the 12th of May 2005 on MTV. This announcement marked the first next generation system to be revealed by Microsoft.