Games - Xbox Live

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	Games - Xbox Live

Xbox Live is a subscription-based online gaming service for Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 video game consoles. It was launched on November 15, 2002, and re-launched with support for the Xbox 360 on November 22, 2005. The service allows players to play games with or against other Xbox Live players from around the world. Over 100 Xbox games are Xbox Live Enabled; all Xbox 360 games are at least "Xbox Live aware" with support for game achievements and leaderboards.

Features

Xbox Live provides voice communications through a headset bundled either with the Xbox 360 premium package or with the Xbox Live starter kit, a console-related friends list of other selected online players, as well as a messaging system of either text or voice messages.

As long as you are signed in to Xbox Live, while either playing a game, watching a DVD or navigating the dashboard, you have access to view all your friends, see what your online friends are doing, and send messages via the dashboard or the Xbox 360 guide. The Xbox 360 has extensive support for a friend's status, often revealing not only the game they are playing, but which mode of play and even which level they are in.

Xbox Live is a secure system regarding credit cards, and in some respects has become even safer, with Microsoft's introduction of Microsoft Points, which greatly cut down the amount of separate credit card transactions Microsoft handles.

Centralization

Unlike other online multiplayer systems (including those used on the PC and PlayStation 2), Xbox Live is highly centralized. This means that while game companies supply the networking code and gameplay, Microsoft provides the server bandwidth and user front-end; this, in turn, removes some of the financial burden from game developers who do not already have such systems in place, adding incentive to add multiplayer modes to certain genres of non-persistent game. This system also means that instead of paying third parties for access to each individual game, users pay only one subscription fee for every game they own. Also, because Xbox Live is broadband-only, it is much less susceptible to network lag, though it does exclude users in geographic areas where high-speed Internet access is not affordable to residential customers. While some third-party services for online play also exist, they are unsupported by Microsoft.

Centralization does have its downsides, however. On the PC, for example, few games charge a separate fee to play online. Players pay monthly fees for massively multiplayer online games (regardless of the platform), which, on Xbox Live, translates to paying in addition to the yearly fee, such as Phantasy Star Onlines 9USD a month. The centralized requirement of Xbox Live was also one of the reasons why Electronic Arts
was reluctant to use the service. However, Electronic Arts finally released its first Xbox Live title in 2004: NCAA Football 2005. Contrarily, Nintendo
's Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
is setup on a game-by-game basis and free, making it both more accessible and less feature-rich when compared with Xbox Live.
History
At the Game Developers Conference
in March 2004, Microsoft announced plans to make newer versions of Windows
support Xbox Live, thereby opening the service to computer gamers.

Xbox Live received a major boost in May 2004 when Electronic Arts
announced it would support the service for the first time (the company had formerly only supported the PlayStation 2's online capabilities) — with the concession, however, that EA's own servers could be used instead of the standard servers maintained by Microsoft for other Xbox Live titles. Many users in Europe have complained about the performance of EA's servers, however, particularly on the game Burnout 3, questioning the logic of providing a central service only to decentralise servers for certain titles.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Xbox Live ]

Games - Xbox Live

Features

Centralization

History

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