Onn the 15^th of November, 2001, one console was announced that changed the world of gaming forever, introducing new ways to play games, a proper online gaming system, and plenty of titles and franchises that brought players to new worlds, and experienced new stories: the Xbox.

Xbox has been a pillar of the gaming industry since that faithful day in 2001. With 20 years behind them, there’s still plenty of time to look forward to the future. However, that doesn’t mean players shouldn’t look back to the past.

Xbox, wanting to celebrate this landmark achievement, hosted a 30-minute Xbox live stream earlier yesterday, which brought back memories from the console’s life, as well as some special announcements for the Xbox brand.

The Xbox 20th anniversary live stream opened up showcasing moments from Xbox’s history, like the original Halo, Gears of War, Fable, and even Indie titles like Castle Crashers and Braid.

The video then turns to the stage, made to look exactly like the original Xbox’s splash screen. Robbie Bach, the first head of Xbox, appears on stage, welcoming the players to the live stream. He talks about how the Xbox was originally a business venture, which then became a new vision of gaming. He mentions the challenges and rocky road that Microsoft had to go through to get Xbox working. After his speech, the video transitions into the first announcement.

After the documentary announcement, the Xbox 20th anniversary live stream shared some words from Phil Spencer,and then transitioned into Xbox showing how some of its players formed friendships with others that then expanded into real life. These kinds of friendships were possible on old consoles, and on new consoles as well. However, some games from days gone haven’t been brought to new consoles yet. With these changes, more than 70 Xbox and Xbox 360 games have been added to the backward compatibility catalog, though the entire Max Payne series and the entire F.E.A.R. series have not been made backward compatible on all Xbox One, and Xbox Series consoles.

Dead or Alive Ultimate, and Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, are also now able to be played. All of the games included are going to take advantage of auto HDR as well. Some titles, like the Gears series, Sonic Generations, and Sonic Unleashed, are going to benefit from an FPS boost, which will take the power of the new systems to run the game at a better, and more enhanced framerate than they could originally be played. For those who want to know the full list of titles, they can check out the full list here.

While it’s not super important, Xbox and the Rock teamed up once again to show off some Xbox history and test the brains of the players themselves. In conjunction with the Rock’s new action film Red Notice, players have the opportunity to win some sweet Xbox prizes in sweepstakes if they attempt a quiz. Since the film is in conjunction with the art thief thriller Red Notice, players will be breaking into the Xbox Vault, and playing trivia with some of the artifacts inside of the room. While some of them are pretty standard questions, such as, “what’s the name of the blond character present in the Fallout series,” or “What the animal the four-wheeled vehicles from Halo is based on,” players can learn some things about the console and some of the games that come with them. However, there are a few questions related to the film on Netflix.

Answering as many questions as possible in the allotted time in the vault will give the player the opportunity to enter themselves for a chance to win an Xbox Series X donned in red and gold from the film or a replica set of the Cleopatra Eggs from the movie, hidden with Xbox easter eggs. There’s also a handful of trading cards that come with a free year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

With it being Xbox’s 20^th Anniversary, Xbox wouldn’t be where they were now without the Halo series. The FPS game that single-handedly sent players into a whole new world and was one of the pioneers of FPS storytelling, as well as casual online multiplayer gaming. Being that Halo is such a paramount series, it’s fitting that the rights to the Halo live-action series are given to Paramount+. Fans were shown a brief trailer of the live-action show, which featured a suitless Master Chief, minus the face, and another look at the Spartan’s live-action costume.