From a “HARDWARE” button
to “Play Games Anywhere”

The June 18, 2001 capture is mostly green. The metal buttons that survive in the archive, GAMES, HARDWARE and COMMUNITY, sit around a big glowing ball with an X inside, and a small XBOX wordmark hangs off to the right. A white panel underneath lists six links: Shrek, State of the Xbox Vol. 4, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Star Wars: Obi-Wan, E3 2001 Recap and SoBe and Xbox Team Up to Energize Gamers. Several images don’t render in this capture, which leaves plain green gaps.

There was nothing to buy yet. Microsoft’s May 2001 announcement promised the console for November 8.^[1] It went on sale in North America on November 15, a week later than announced.^[2]

Scroll to the footer and the menu already has a link called MY XBOX, next to FEEDBACK and NEWSLETTER. The copyright line reads 2000-2001 Microsoft Corporation. The page’s title, the text on the browser tab, is just xbox.com ||.

By December 4, 2003 the homepage sits inside a silver frame with rounded ends and a green glow along the edges. Under the XBOX wordmark the page prints the day’s date and your country: December 04 | United States. The sign-in button’s alt text reads Sign in with your .NET Passport, and Xbox Live has its own tab in the menu.

The game blurbs read like box backs. Counter-Strike™ for the Xbox: The popular FPS goes online and takes off the safety. Crimson Skies™: High Road to Revenge: Pilot warplanes and rescue dames in distress. Xbox Live, the online service in that menu, had started in November 2002 with games such as MechAssault and Ghost Recon.^[3]

The November 30, 2004 capture keeps the frame and swaps the games. Halo® 2: Master Chief has landed on Earth and seized the hearts of gamers worldwide. Under it: Wrap your desktop in Halo. The big panel on the left needed a plug-in and shows only Couldn't load plugin.

The Xbox Live page from August 2003 wears the same silver frame. It opens with Welcome to the Xbox Live Web! and an offer to Link your Gamertag for a chance to win a trip for two to the Halo 2 Launch Party! A box in the corner gives the service status:

The Starter Kit costs $49.99 USD, and a column of press quotes includes Penny-Arcade.com: It went from something I could mostly do without to something I use every day in the space of like eight days.

We have no usable homepage from 2005 to 2008. The captures we tried send you to a country picker or an MSN sign-in page that wasn’t archived, or load without their styles. Those are the years the Xbox 360 arrived: November 22, 2005 in North America.^[4]

The June 19, 2009 capture is an Xbox 360 page, centered on a grey background. The headline says Xbox Unveils Controller-Free Gaming and Entertainment, over a giant XBOX 360 logo, and the pictures’ alt texts include Project Natal, Halo 3 ODST and Forza 3. Next to it, a small box asks you to install Microsoft Silverlight. Below are three tiles, MORE Games, MORE Entertainment and MORE Social, with a Facebook logo in the last one.

The closed menus, in the page code, show what an Xbox 360 did besides games. The Xbox LIVE menu lists Netflix, Avatars and 1 vs 100, and another offers Join Xbox LIVE - Free. In the June 13, 2010 capture the same menu adds Zune Video and Last.fm, the Community menu gets Facebook and Twitter, and the hero is a white console bundle: Get 2 FREE Family Games When You Buy an Xbox 360 Arcade This Spring.

In October 2010 Microsoft rebuilt xbox.com. The announcement promised a Browser based Avatar editor and a way to Play web games with your Xbox LIVE friends on the web or on Windows Phone 7.^[5] The June 15, 2011 capture is that new site: white, with a green sweep down the right edge, and the code of its My Xbox menu has an Avatar Editor item. The browser tab now says Xbox 360 - Official Site - Xbox.com.

The Call of Duty ELITE trailer at the top still asks you to Download Silverlight. Under it, the Kinect tile has a short pitch: No gadgets, no gizmos, just you. You are the controller.

The June 17, 2012 capture sells a white console with a matching Kinect under USE THE FORCE, the limited edition Kinect Star Wars Bundle. Then comes E3 Highlights: Entertainment Evolved with the logos of XFINITY, Verizon and Amazon, and a Spotlight title in the code reads Verizon FiOS TV Live on Your Xbox 360. The Games menu’s code now has Windows Phone Games and Web Games, and the footer has a link we first see in 2012 that is still there in 2026: Photosensitive Seizure Warning.

The Xbox Live page got the same white look. On January 1, 2011 its tabs are Entertainment, Friends + Family, Games and Windows Phone 7.

On June 16, 2013 the hero is Ryse: Son of Rome: FIGHT AS A SOLDIER. LEAD AS A GENERAL. RISE A LEGEND. Right below it is a new heading, Meet Xbox One. The code of the menu explains the new console in three items, What it is, What it does and How it games, and the Spotlight row says Reserve Your Day One Edition Today.

The browser tab still reads Xbox 360 - Official Site - Xbox.com. Three days after this capture, Microsoft changed the rules it had announced for Xbox One. There is no 24 hour connection requirement, the June 19 post said, and disc games could be lent and resold as on Xbox 360.^[6] None of that shows on this page yet. The Spotlight carousel’s code points ahead with an item our still doesn’t show: Enter The World Of Sunset Overdrive.

A year later Sunset Overdrive takes the whole width of the June 15, 2014 page, a crowded comic-book drawing that ends at the edges of the screen. The centered box with grey margins is gone. So is the word XBOX in the logo: only the round silver symbol is left.

The browser tab makes a new promise: Xbox | Games and Entertainment on All Your Devices. In the code, the Games menu lists Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone, and Support has an item called Xbox on other devices. Below the drawing, the first tile prices the new console: Buy now. Starting at $399.

The June 15, 2015 capture is E3 week, and the page is a dark panel: Xbox at E3 2015, with Watch the E3 Briefing on demand and Xbox Daily: LIVE @ E3, 4pm PDT and a hashtag, #XboxE3. The white XBOX wordmark is back beside the symbol. Further down, a banner says Play Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, and the tab is now plain Xbox | Official Site.

In the June 16, 2016 capture xbox.com sits under someone else’s menu. A white Microsoft bar with Store, Products and Support runs above the green Xbox one, and the code of its closed dropdowns lists Microsoft Band, Microsoft Lumia and Microsoft HoloLens. The hero is the white Xbox One S, Sleeker. Slimmer. Sharper., and a strip under it says New low price* $279.

The Xbox Live page from January 1, 2016 is one large photo of players in headsets under Welcome to Xbox Live and The world's premier gaming community. A line below sells the paid tier: Get the most advanced multiplayer on Xbox consoles and free games with Xbox Live Gold.

On June 15, 2017 the homepage is almost black: a close-up of a circuit board with a small line for E3, See the latest tech, games and features from E3. The code of the Consoles menu lists a console that wasn’t there a year earlier, Xbox One X. In June 2016 the same menu’s code had listed Project Scorpio, and the new item still carries that name inside: ms.cmpnm='Scorpio'.

The Games menu has a new item too, in the code: Xbox Game Pass. The subscription had launched publicly on June 1, 2017,^[8] with more than 100 Xbox One and backward compatible Xbox 360 games for $9.99 a month. You didn’t stream them. In the announcement’s words, you would download the full titles directly on your Xbox One.^[7]

The June 16, 2018 hero is a sale, Xbox Big Fun Deals - E3 Week: Shop the biggest Xbox sale of the year, June 7 - June 17. Under it a new row of six thin green icons works as a second menu, and right below that is a Game Pass offer, Get your first month for $1. The icon labels and their order change across our captures, so here they are, year by year:

In the June 16, 2019 capture a LEGO race car fills the hero with GET THE EXPANSION, and the Game Pass menu’s code has a new item, PC Games Plan. The image tags in its code are odd. Their alt texts are empty, and next to them sit template keys for the missing descriptions, such as data-loc-alt="keyAltmos1pos1" and keyAltdq1left. Some of the same keys are still in the homepage’s code in 2026.

The June 15, 2020 hero is one dark object: the Xbox Series X, a tall black tower with a grid of holes on top, next to Power your dreams. In the code it also leads the Devices menu, above the Xbox One models, and the Games menu has a new item: Xbox Game Streaming (Preview). The Series X and the smaller Series S went on sale on November 10, 2020, at estimated retail prices of $499 and $299.^[9]

People said the tower looked like a fridge, and Microsoft played along. Xbox Wire, October 2021: What started as a viral meme became a life-size reality. First came a 6-foot, 400-pound replica, then a matte-black mini fridge shaped like the console.^[10]

On June 16, 2021 a small “20” emblem sits in the top bar, next to the Microsoft logo. The hero is Xbox and Bethesda’s June games event: Get the latest news and announcements from Xbox. In the icon row the console icon is now a tall tower, Game Pass has replaced Community, and the Game Pass menu’s code lists Cloud gaming (Beta). At the bottom of the page, the alt text of the Twitter icon says Twitter logo.

In October 2021 xbox.com was reportedly dressed up as the tabbed Xbox 360 dashboard for the anniversary. The report comes from the Spanish site Meristation, and that version is not in our captures.^[11]

In December, Xbox’s digital museum had a secret. Xbox Wire told readers to click the Master Chief statue to unlock a hidden room, the Halo Museum. A third room, My Xbox Museum, showed your own history, from the first game you played to your most popular genre played.^[12]

By January 1, 2021 the old xbox.com/live address shows a different page. Its browser title is Account with Xbox | Xbox, and the headline says ONE ACCOUNT FOR EVERYTHING XBOX, with get the most out of Xbox wherever you are underneath. The words Xbox Live aren’t in the headline any more.

Our captures from 2022 to 2025 show only an empty dark app shell, a Brazilian Portuguese page, or a page that lost its styles. The last frame is the live site on October 16, 2026, and it spells the brand in capitals: XBOX Official Site: Play Games Anywhere | XBOX. The hero is Minecraft Dungeons II, AVAILABLE WITH GAME PASS, with a JOIN GAME PASS button before GET IT NOW. Further down: Celebrate 25 years of play with XBOX.

In May 2022 Xbox put Fortnite on Xbox.com/play, free in 26 countries and With no installation or memberships required. A phone, tablet or Windows PC with a browser and a Microsoft account was enough.^[13] In the 2026 code, the Games menu item Cloud games still points to xbox.com/play.

An ad campaign from November 2024 made the same point about other screens. It was called This Is An Xbox, and a T-shirt in it read This Is Not An Xbox (reported).^[14]

The small print has moved with the times. The live page’s footer code still links the Photosensitive Seizure Warning we first saw in 2012, the template key keyAltmos1pos1 is still there, and the alt text that said Twitter logo in 2021 now reads X logo.

In 2001 the buttons around the green ball said GAMES, HARDWARE and COMMUNITY. In 2026 the row has six icons. None says Hardware, the first is Game Pass and the fifth just says Play.