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The xbox was born of the Microsoft desires to expand their product offering into consumer media entertainment.

Uh, hmm, y'know considering that the XBox was a single core clocked at 733mhz with 512mb of shared RAM at a time when your average gaming PC was packing approximately twice ghat power plus a discrete graphics card, I can't help but think that the fact that the developers knew the exact performance characteristics of the machine made it a lot easier to wrench a lot of power out of it.

Also, it stuck around for at least 4 years.

There has got to be something to the fact that they didn't stick with an x86 architecture for the next revision as well.

I always assumed it was born out of Microsoft's desire to make more money.