Xbox Live is undoubtedly the best online gaming service out there. Sure, some publishers have well set-up game servers with excellent coding, most notabally EA’s Sports Nation and Games Nation, Ubisoft’s ubi.com, and of course Blizzard’s Battle.net, but only on the Xbox do a variety of games from many different publishers come together (including EA) and function perfectly. The all-broadband network that is Xbox Live is truly a thing of beauty, but it hasnt always been like this. I remember the days when you couldnt use your console as an online game machine, GASP! It truly began in 1994, when a company by the name of id Software released a demo of a game by the name of Quake. The game featured some alright single player action, but most people simply brushed it off as a lackluster action First Person Shooter when compared to id’s own classics, Doom and Doom II. But nobody knew of id’s grandmaster plan, and once Quake was launched, people saw what the Texas development house had up their sleeves with Quake: The online deathmatch. id Software knew that the internet was the future, thus the reason they started the online gaming revolution, and created the very first mod community, where players made their own game types and maps. Amazingly enough, its through this mod community that we got another now standard game type for most FPSs: Capture The Flag.
Merely four years later, the phenomenal Half-Life had PC gamers enjoying quite possibly the best single player experience in an FPS ever. The game also came equipped with a multiplayer mode, and as with most online games, a robust mod community emerged. I think you all know where Im going with this one. Yes, Im talking about Counter-Strike, the most popular online action game, ever, propelling Half-Life into one of the best games ever. The game was rather simple, yet amazingly addictive, and damn fun. The game pitted a team of terrorists against a team of counter-terrorists, and became the standard by which all other objective based multiplayer titles will be judged. Game modes included Bomb Defusal, Hostage Rescue, and a few others, though they never became as popular as the former two. Players could earn credits to upgrade weapons, body armor, and other assorted stuff. The game was so huge, Valve decided to pick it up and make it one of their official franchises, and eventually, it made its way onto Xbox Live.
In 1999, online games were becoming bigger and better, and extending to new platforms. While MUDs (Multiple User Dimmensions, for those of you not familiar with the term) had been around since practically forever, Sony had something in the oven that was cooking up to take these to an all new level. Again, you know where Im going. What Im talking about is Everquest, and it took the MMORPG genre, which had been mainly spawned by Ultima Online, and did it right! Players could meet together to go on quests, join together to slay opposing factions, sell and barter their hard-earned goods, and basically live it up in the days of yore.
In late 1999, Sega released the Dreamcast, which may not seem like much at first. But in the system, Sega had put a small little surprise in it for gamers: a 56k modem. While not very impressive by todays standards, it single handedly launched the online console revolution. Games like NFL 2k1, and Phantasy Star Online. It was all for naught, unfortunately, and Sega folded in the hardware division, and became strictly 3rd party.
Flash forward to November 15, 2001. Xbox launch. The system came pre-installed with a hard drive and an ethernet port, leading haters to beleive the system really was nothing more than a scaled back PC, and the uninformed that those two tools would be used for nothing more than game saves and LAN games. Oh would they be in for a surprise.
On the one year anniversary of the Xbox launch… IT came. Xbox Live was launched, and for a good 6 months, it was not sure whether or not the service would survive. For one, it was an online console, and as we saw with the Dreamcast, it did not last long. Secondly, Microsoft had opted for an all broadband network, which was not as widely used in 2002. But thankfully, Microsoft did things with right with Xbox Live. For a mere $50, a Starter Kit was yours, it was easy to connect to the service, no matter how you hooked it up, and most importantly, it launched with great games that had lasting appeal (We’ll just ignore Whacked! ;)). MechAssault, Ghost Recon, and Unreal Championship were the titans that kept the service alive and well, and assured that there was always somebody online to get your frag on with.
So here we are, nearly two years after the service launched, and its now thriving. Over 1 million members, and a TON of great games here and now and on the horizon. The Tom Clancy titles, Halo 2, MechAssault 1 and 2, Battlefield: Modern Combat, Project Gotham Racing 2, and Crimson Skies are just a sampling of all the awesome games Xbox Live has. The service is rock solid, and many developers prefer it to the Playstation 2’s way to play online.
All in all, Xbox Live has been a long time coming, and shows the nirvana that online gaming can be if its done right.
