MicroSoft Xbox 360

Microsoft sells Computer Games that run on Windows PCs, including titles such as "Age of Empires" , "Halo" and theMicroSoft Flight Simulator series. It produces a line of refernce works that include encylopedias and atlases, under the name Encarta. MicroSoft Zone hosts free premium and retail games where players can compete against each other and in tournaments. Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar "Game Console" market dominated by Sony and Nintendo in late 2001, with the release of the Xbox. The company develops and publishes its own video games for this console, with the help of its MicroSoft Games Studios subsidiary, in addition to third-party Xbox Video Game Publishers such as and Activision, who pay a license fee to publish games for the system. The Xbox also has a successor in the "Xbox360", released on 2005-11-22 in North America and other countries. With the Xbox 360, Microsoft hopes to compensate for the losses incurred with the original Xbox. However, Microsoft made some decisions considered controversial in the video Gaming community, such as selling two different versions of the system, as well as providing backward compactibility with only particular Xbox titles. In addition to the Xbox line of products, Microsoft also markets a number of other computing-related hardware products as well, including mice, Keyboard, Joy sticks & Game Pads, along with other game comtrollers,, the production of which is outsourced in most cases. However on July 7, 2006, a lawsuit against Microsoft was filed by Dallas-based law firm Mckool Smith on behalf of Anascape for patent infringement regarding sensors and remote controllers.