VGLN.com staff writer Kyle Johnson gives us his take on Microsoft's much anticipated Xbox gaming network, Xbox live!
Xbox Live is coming up very quickly, and there’s no doubt that it will be a great hit amongst Xbox owners, and future Xbox owners. But there’s one big question that a lot of people seem to be asking. “What are some good Xbox Live games!?!?!” Well the answer is pretty difficult, seeing as everyone has their own tastes when it comes to video games. Well, AreaXbox.com has teamed up with VGLN.com to bring you this feature.
What’s Xbox Live?
The driving force behind Xbox Live, the online gaming service by Microsoft unveiled at the company's E3 Press Conference, is getting gamers online as quickly and easily as possible. For an initial price of $49.99 this fall, gamers can purchase an Xbox Live Starter Kit, a pack that comes loaded with the Xbox Voice Communicator peripheral and a disc of Xbox Live software that will bring all of the online gaming hardware already built into the Xbox screaming to life. That $50 will get you 12 months of service, but Microsoft hasn't announced any renewal plans beyond the first year. But the company internally is close to maintaining a $9.95 per month value for the service. The potential for all kinds of soft bundles and other subscription packages with broadband service providers is tremendous, but Microsoft has held back on any such announcements. Xbox General Manager J Allard stopped short of picking a specific launch date for Xbox Live, instead opting for the solidly vague "Fall" window as the arrival time for XBL.
One solid piece of information that gamers can look forward to was the list of first party Xbox Live launch titles they'll have whenever that "Fall" launch rolls around:
Microsoft is counting on many more Xbox Live titles from third party companies during the launch window of the service, this distinguished list includes:
· ToeJam & Earl 3: All Funked Up · Ghost Recon · Shayde: Monsters vs. Humans · NFL 2K3 · Rayman Arena · Armada 2 · NCAA College Basketball 2K3 · Rainbow Six: Ravens Shield · Tetris Worlds · Timesplitters 2 · Lamborghini · MX Superfly · XIII · NBA 2K3 · Counter-Strike · Star Wars Galaxies
The list of Xbox Live titles expands to include new online versions of previously released games including Halo, Project Gotham, Amped and Rallisport Challenge. These games are still being referred to by the original names but will be reworked in some way to include and online component of one kind or another.
Many Xbox Live players will have already grown a familiarity with the master chief from Halo and the upcoming Halo 2.
How will it work?
Simplicity is the key to Xbox Live. Microsoft is building the entire infrastructure for its online network from scratch to make sure it has the security, reliability and functionality that the Xbox's forefathers envisioned when the system was built. Allard estimated that MS spent roughly $50 per console on hardware and pre-programming that will be used for Xbox Live. That is, every gamer out there with an Xbox is already holding all of the technology necessary for online gaming, it's just remained dormant all this time.
The Xbox Live Starter Kit disc will come with software that will activate all of those high tech innards of the Xbox in addition to taking user information such as credit card info, demographic data and the all important user ID. You'll need to have an active, paid for broadband account with some provider before launching Xbox Live since all of the registration is done online. Your user ID will be stuck with you and your account for life so choose your name wisely. You choose your password by hitting button pushes and trigger pulls on your Xbox controller. This is just one part of the "military grade" security Xbox Live is incorporating. Once your credit card info has been transmitted and charged and your account is activated, your user ID is locked onto the Xbox that created it and it can only be activated by the user and his or her unique password combo. The only way you can go on Xbox Live from another Xbox is by way of (drumroll please) the memory unit. The 8MB memory unit can save your Xbox Live user ID so that you can transport it to a friend's house for a little online double teaming.
n addition to a single unique user ID, which allows for ultra secure gaming, playing an Xbox Live game will have another important defining feature. There will be no keyboard and every single Xbox Live game, every title mentioned above, will have voice communication capabilities by definition. The Voice Communicator fits in the top slot on the Xbox controller, and in the top slot only. The sound processing is clear enough to compare favorably to the sound you might hear on mobile phone using a hands free set. Only voices of other players can be heard over the headset, all in-game music and sound effects will still come from whatever speakers you happen to be using.
In Microsoft's efforts to create a "global couch" making new friends, finding the ones you have and interacting with them is a huge focus for Xbox Live. Matchmaking comes in two varieties. Opti-Match helps you find people of your same skill level, playing the same game as you and on a connection that's suitable for steady game play. The concept of gamers balancing ping and pushing the limits of fluidity is supposed to go out the window with Xbox Live. In theory, when gamers are looking for new opponents online, they won't even see, and hence won't have to be bothered with, gamers who have too much lag for a smooth gaming experience. Quick Match is the opposite, it simply brings up the first online gaming server with an available opening as soon as you've finished selecting your character, team or car and if you say "yes" away you go.
Your user ID also tracks your stats in your games and can be expanded to include your gaming profile so that your favorite team or car or character will automatically be selected when you power up an Xbox Live game and logon. The stat tracking should be implemented at launch and will be a key factor in matchmaking. If you're a veteran Ghost Recon player with hundreds of kills under your belt, you simply won't be able to invade a game with a bunch of newbies with the idea of slaughtering at will to boost your stats even more. Your Ghost Recon gaming data is stored on your user ID on your Xbox which is read by the gaming server at the Xbox Live data center when you log on so you can't "fake" it and pretend you're a sucky player. If you're going to be attacking games full of newbies or if you're a rookie trying to hang with veterans it will have to be done via the buddy list. Meaning you'll have to make friends with a bunch of people out of your league and convince them to let you into their game. Fat chance of that happening.
Friend tracking is the other half of creating that online community. This will function more or less like an instant messenger buddy list so that you'll instantly be able to see that your friends are online and what game they're playing. You'll be able to send them an instant message for the purposes of inviting them to play a game. Your friend then has the option of replying positively to your message in which case he or she has to pop out whatever disc he or she is playing and put in the disc of the game that you're playing. Or you can simply tell your buddy to buzz off. The magic is that this is one area out of many where the Xbox Live team has set up things nice and stable the way the company wanted, but game developers will still have the freedom to implement their creativity in key areas. That is a game maker can do some creative things with the whole buddy tracking/interaction system so that rather than simply sending messages and responses, the player might be able to do something in the game that he's playing like call a timeout in a sports game or shoot a flare in an action game as a way of responding to their buddy's request for a game.
Developers will determine just how massively multiplayer their Xbox Live titles will be. The gaming servers are all controlled by Microsoft (and to some degree Sega with their crop of XBL games), so that the game creators simply have to request the bandwidth they'll need to get the desired result. NFL Fever can only support eight players on two Xboxes at the maximum and only when they're going to head to head. That is you in St. Louis can team up with your buddy in San Antonio to take on some schmuck in Santa Fe. If you and your friend want to beat up on Santa Fe, one of you is going to have to hop on a plane because cooperative gameplay in Fever can only be done with 1-4 players on one Xbox and opponent(s) on another. A game like Unreal Championship is going to have an entirely different set of rules and parameters as determined by the nature of online first person shooters.
Content downloading is another significant advantage of Xbox Live. The ever mercurial dream of downloadable content will in fact become a reality with XBL. The tentative plan for ToeJam & Earl 3 is to introduce new content to the game over time. In theory this increases the value of the game and more or less gets new content to gamers much quicker rather than relying on the established cycle of sequels. Of course this also opens up all kinds of potential pricing options for publishers. Not only can they sell downloadable stuff for, say, $9.95 a pop, but what about sponsorship deals that will give you that new Taco Bell sponsored skate park Tony Hawk was skating through on the X Games last week? The possiblities are endless.
With Microsoft assuming all of the responsibilities and costs for online gaming (and thus the overwhelming share of the profits if this thing takes off) game publishers are supposed to free to focus on the creative side of online gaming. Big companies still reserve the right to charge for access fees, on whatever kind of plan they want, for their games which would be in addition to the cost of signing up for Xbox Live.
The Xbox Live Starter Kit disc will come with an online capable version of Acclaim's Re-Volt so gamers will have something to play right away if they don't have the scratch to pick up a $50 Xbox Live game like NFL Fever 2003.
Xbox Live's greatest strength may be its money making and money saving methods for all parties involved. Publisher and developers are freed from the burden of setting up, maintaining and securing gaming servers and accounts, yet they can still get in on the online gaming market enjoyed by PC-centric companies. Retailers are always happy to have new products to sell and Xbox Live should provide them with new hardware (the Starter Kit) and services (broadband service brokers). And finally, online gaming could be the application that broadband service providers have been waiting for to push their product to mainstream consumers.
Top 10 Games:
Now that you’ve read what Xbox Live is all about, we’ll continue on by giving you our Top 10 Xbox Live games. While some of the games that made our top 10 list may not have been listed above, we are including games that we’ve heard rumors about going to Xbox Live.
AreaXbox.com Top 10 Xbox Live games: · Halo 2 · NFL Fever 2003 · Unreal Championship · MechAssault · Lamborghini · NFL 2k3 · NBA 2k3 · Rainbow Six: Ravens Shield · XIII · Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Information on the games:
· Halo 2: Halo 2 is the sequel to the 2001 Game of the Year, Halo. With Halo being one of the best Xbox games to date, Halo 2 will take the title away from Halo, and deliver the best online gaming experience. · NFL Fever 2003: NFL Fever 2002 was voted as one of the best football games on any of the next-generation consoles (PlayStation2, GameCube, Xbox). With improved gameplay, graphics, controls, and Xbox Live support, NFL Fever 2003 will once again dominate the field. · Unreal Championship: Developed by Digital Extremes, Unreal™ Championship is an upcoming first-person action game built from the ground up exclusively for the Xbox™ video game system from Microsoft, utilizing the latest Unreal technology by Epic Games. Unreal Championship combines a brilliant single player experience with an unparalleled multi-player component. Additional features include all new characters and weapons; land, air and team-based vehicles; exotic levels and environments as well as new game modes and some old favorites. Players will be able to play through a series of matches in the single player mode against computer-controlled opponents (bots) or play online against human-controlled opponents. Both single-player and online aspects of the game will be rich with content and gameplay options giving the player a wide range of first person action experiences. · MechAssault: Pilot the most powerful weapon available in the 31st century, a 40-foot tall walking tank known as a BattleMech. MechAssault is a 3rd-person action/shooter, where environments are not only fully destructible, they’re your weapons. Choose from a dozen ’Mechs ranging from quick 30- tonners to huge 100-ton beasts. Configure your ’Mech and optimize it to crush your opponents. Challenge yourself with 20 single-player missions and get prepared for the ultimate multiplayer online experience. · Lamborghini: The game will allow the player to join the ‘Lamborghini Millionaires Club’, founded by high-rolling millionaires with a passion for speed, risk and Lamborghini, and race in a series of leagues set in exotic locations around the world. Members can indulge in high stakes challenges to build up the ultimate collection of Lamborghini vehicles and can also obtain rare and collectable vehicles by entering special ‘pink slip challenges’ where large sums of money and cars may be won and lost. · NBA 2k3: NBA 2K3 Continues the NBA 2Kx Series, and will bring NBA 2K3 to the Xbox Video Game System sometime this summer. · NFL 2k3: The series that redefined the standards of football gaming returns for a brand new season, with a totally revamped franchise mode, drastically improved AI and brilliant new graphics featuring redesigned 3D stadiums, updated player and facial models and hundreds of new animations. SEGA Sports NFL 2K3 is the cure for gridiron fans everywhere, whether your squad happens to be the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, or the expansion Houston Texans. · Rainbow Six: Ravens Shield: Rainbow Six: Raven Shield features a brand new Tom Clancy storyline in which Team RAINBOW is led all over the world in a string of dramatic operations. The game will utilize graphics technology provided by the next-generation Unreal engine to power 15 new single-player missions that include the discovery of a cache of biological weapons and stopping an armed gang from terrorizing a London bank. · XIII: XIII is the first FPS to utilize cel-shaded graphics to create a visually stunning effect unique within the action genre. XIII features a conspiracy of epic proportions, and players will unravel clues behind the story's compelling and mysterious events through the game's unique flashback visuals. Ubi Soft has also stated that this title will have online capabilities. XIII is targeted for a Q1 2003 release. · Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Russia has fallen under the control of ultra nationalistic politicians intent on rebuilding the Iron Curtain. This leads to conflict with NATO as Russia attempts to reclaim the breakaway Republic of Georgia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
VGLN.com Top 10 Xbox Live games: · Halo 2 · NFL Fever 2003 · Project Ego · Halo: Combat Evolved · Brute Force · NBA 2k3 · Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon · Tetris Worlds · Phantasy Star Online · Unreal Championship
Information on the games: · Halo 2: Halo 2 is the sequel to the 2001 Game of the Year, Halo. With Halo being one of the best Xbox games to date, Halo 2 will take the title away from Halo, and deliver the best online gaming experience. · NFL Fever 2003: NFL Fever 2002 was voted as one of the best football games on any of the next-generation consoles (PlayStation2, GameCube, Xbox). With improved gameplay, graphics, controls, and Xbox Live support, NFL Fever 2003 will once again dominate the field. · Project Ego: The Xbox's first high-profile RPG and one that is set to revolutionize the genre. Made by Big Blue Box with the oversight of Peter Molyneaux, Project Ego features a world that evolves as you play and inhabitants that learn, grow and adapt on the fly. · Halo: Combat Evolved: Considered by many to be the Xbox's flagship title, Halo is a highly anticipated, story-driven FPS. You play the role a futuristic warrior fighting against a hostile alien force for control of a mysterious halo-shaped world. With its amazing graphics and promising multiplayer features, Halo became the 2001 Game of the Year by many online publications. · Brute Force: Brute Force is a futuristic squad based, tactical shooter, played from a third person perspective. · NBA 2k3: The sequel to one of the best basketball games on the Xbox, NBA 2k2. NBA 2k3 will utilize everything NBA 2k2 did, plus more, including Xbox Live. · Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Russia has fallen under the control of ultra nationalistic politicians intent on rebuilding the Iron Curtain. This leads to conflict with NATO as Russia attempts to reclaim the breakaway Republic of Georgia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. · Tetris Worlds: Tetris, the world's most popular electronic game, is a deceptively simple, completely addictive puzzle game! With Tetris Worlds, you get everything you love about Tetris, and more with beautiful graphics, six variations of the classic gameplay, and intense multi-player action! Test your Tetris skills in the most popular versions of Tetris, or the latest variations. If you aren't addicted to Tetris, you must be living under a rock! · Phantasy Star Online: The new frontier awaits. The Hunters of Pioneer 2 have discovered the wonders of Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2. Including all of the original gameplay, PSO Ver. 1. · Unreal Championship: Developed by Digital Extremes, Unreal™ Championship is an upcoming first-person action game built from the ground up exclusively for the Xbox™ video game system from Microsoft, utilizing the latest Unreal technology by Epic Games. Unreal Championship combines a brilliant single player experience with an unparalleled multi-player component. Additional features include all new characters and weapons; land, air and team-based vehicles; exotic levels and environments as well as new game modes and some old favorites. Players will be able to play through a series of matches in the single player mode against computer-controlled opponents (bots) or play online against human-controlled opponents. Both single-player and online aspects of the game will be rich with content and gameplay options giving the player a wide range of first person action experiences.
NFL Fever 2003 will fill in the gap that Madden will not (EA decided not to support Xbox Live).
There you have it. A short but concise preview of perhaps the biggest home console development in years. November 15th will be a day that the gaming world will definitely change!
