Note: This is the first in a series of posts celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Xbox. Check back daily for new musings and selections from our Holiday issue, on sale Nov. 15, celebrating a decade of Xbox history. 

The Launch Line-up (2001)
Twelve games heralded a strong launch of XBox on Nov. 15, 2001. Five of them are worth noting.

Halo: Combat Evolved
The big gun at launch and the game that spawned dozens of imitators, Halo: Combat Evolved’s importance in the Xbox library goes without saying. Master Chief’s debut not only represented a watershed moment for the FPS genre on console, but also signaled a huge shift in game development: Western studios turned a corner and began claiming unparalleled success on consoles — something that, during the previous cycles of hardware, had mostly been left to Japanese developers.

Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee
Quirky industry darlings Oddworld Inhabitants (Abe’s Oddysee, Abe’s Exoddus) offered up one of Xbox’s most unique launch titles in its adventure centered solely around Munch, an adorably bizarre wheelchair-bound creature who sought to liberate his fellow Gabbits and Mudokens, alike. After Munch, Oddworld released 2005’s Stranger’s Wrath, then took a five-year break from its game studio production to concentrate on other entertainment mediums.

Dead or Alive 3
Before its Xbox debut, the Dead or Alive series had whipped up a cultish fan following with its pretty ladies and grapple-counter-based fighting systems on the Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and PlayStation 2. But DOA 3’s release as an Xbox exclusive kicked off a long love affair between the hardware and Team Ninja development team lead Tomonobu Itagaki, one that continued up until his departure from Tecmo in 2008.

Project Gotham Racing
Back in 2007, when Activision scooped up the UK-based racing-game dev Bizarre Creations (though they did more than racing games, as evidenced by The Club and Dreamcast’s Fur Fighters), they also snapped up a piece of Xbox history. Bizarre was the creative force behind Xbox’s exclusive, Microsoft-published racing series — one aimed at catching the attention of hardcore fans of PlayStation’s landmark Gran Turismo franchise. With its mix of arcade and simulation, as well as “gamier” aspects like a Kudos system, PGR — as well as its two sequels — still remains one of the top names in the genre.

NFL Fever 2002
With limited support from third-party publishers like EA — whose Madden NFL franchise was consistently top dog in sales at the time — Microsoft set out to plant a stake in the ground with the debut of its own football label. While it still had plenty of kinks to work out, the release of NFL Fever 2002 at launch signified just how essential sports games were, and continue to be, in a North American console’s library.

XBOX AT 10 ARCHIVE:

2001 - The Xbox's Launch Lineup
2002 - OXM vs "The Duke" controller
2003 - A look back at XSN Sports
2004 - Xbox 360 predicition postmortem
2005 - Xbox 360's Launch Wins and Losses
2006 - OXM Reflects on the Red Ring of Death
2007 - A Look Back on the 10's of '07
2008 - The First Summer of Arcade's Hotness
2009 - Why We Miss 1 vs. 100
2010 - The Highs and Lows of Kinect