Break out the party poppers and strange conical hats with elastic bands that give you a welt if you snap them - today is the 10th birthday of the humble Xbox. In the UK, at least.

The US already celebrated its 10th anniversary of Microsoft's console back on 15 November 2011 (and Japan, 22 February), but the first generation of Bill Gates's big black box hit these shores on 14 March, 2002.

And to celebrate, Microsoft has added an interactive timeline to the British version of the xbox.com website. It begins on 10 March 2000, with video of Gates announcing the new console at the Game Developers Conference and finishes with a picture of the forthcoming special-edition Kinect Star Wars Console (due out on 3 April 2012).

Along the way there are plenty of events to view and read about from both the original Xbox and Xbox 360's life, with some impressive statistics that crawl up as the years whip past. For example, Microsoft has now sold more than 108 million consoles (of both generations), has over 40 million registered Xbox Live account holders, and gamers have racked up more than 196,802,201,400 in Gamerscore points.

Not bad considering everybody thought Microsoft was mad to enter the console gaming space, and few thought the company would be able to compete with Nintendo and Sony.

Kind-of makes us yearn for the mahoosive plastic box of the original. Looked like a skip, but we loved it.

Do you have any great Xbox memories? Let us know in the comments below...