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X-10: Xbox Live: A New Era of Console Gaming

On November 15th, the world of console gaming will enter a new era: broadband online console gaming. Microsoft will finally unfurl its Xbox Live broadband-only gaming service to the console gaming market, bringing high-speed only videogame playing to the masses for the first time in what was a PC-gaming exclusive.

Some industry followers have said that the console gaming world is not ready to embrace online gameplay in supportable numbers – that it’s still a few years down the road to acceptance by console owners. But after experiencing Xbox Live first-hand in its beta test, let me just say that those industry followers are wrong. With a sound online plan and service, Microsoft and its Xbox Live has ushered in the future era of broadband online gaming.

The Xbox certainly isn’t the first console to offer online gaming. The late, great Dreamcast was the first, and Sony’s PS2 has had online play readily available the last few months. But what makes the Xbox stand out against the competition is that right out of the box the ‘Box is ready to connect to the high-speed gaming highway. The Xbox is the only console with an Ethernet modem connection and a hard drive built into the system. The Dreamcast also had a modem attached, but you needed to buy the Ethernet adapter for high-speed play. Sony’s modem for its PS2 will allow either dial-up or Ethernet connectivity. Neither has a hard drive, however.

Sony will supposedly have an attachable one soon, but it doesn’t yet, instead relying on a memory card for storage of downloadable content. The Dreamcast is now dead, and although a PS2 is the same price as an Xbox, you have to shell out extra cash for a memory card and modem (and eventually, possibly a hard drive) to get a PS2 to be on the same level for online connectivity as an Xbox.

With a hard drive and Ethernet modem already built in, the Xbox has a technologically superior console. So the Xbox has an advantage over the PS2 in the hardware department. But that ain’t jack, unless they have a sound online service to connect you, the Xbox gamer, to other online Xbox gamers. Enter Xbox Live, coming November 15.

Microsoft’s online service has the game servers under the Big Brother-style direct control of Microsoft itself. (Sega’s SegaNet service for the Dreamcast was pretty much the same setup). That means that Microsoft and its years of computer and server know-how are in charge of making sure that the Xbox online gaming community gets to play online games as hassle-free and as smoothly as possible, even when it comes to third-party Xbox online titles.

Microsoft isn’t taking any chances in having a third-party company that may have no experience with providing online server capability screw up the good reputation that it hopes to attached to Xbox Live. They’re carrying the heavy-weighted onus for providing quality online gameplay service on their own back.

This is in direct contrast to Sony’s online service. Sony will only take responsibility for the server maintenance of Sony in-house developed titles. Third-party online PS2 title publishers are on their own. They must provide their own servers for their games. This also means that you may have to pay more than one charge for PS2 online gaming. For instance, if EA charges a monthly fee to play Madden football, you may also have to pay a monthly fee to play another online game from another PS2 game publisher. Also, you will not be able to have one umbrella account to cover all your PS2 online gaming. That’s different from Xbox Live. With one account, all your stats and gaming will be under one account for one monthly charge.

So if you look at it, Xbox Live seems to be distinctly ahead of Sony in online gaming. But success in online console gaming will only come to either Microsoft or Sony if the games that come out for their respective system are any good or even desired by online gamers and if the online service provides efficient gameplay. As of this writing, I honestly can’t give an assessment of Sony’s online gaming, because I don’t have a PS2. But if the Xbox Live beta test currently underway that I have test-driven is any indication, Sony should expect fierce competition for the online console gaming market.

When you first get your Xbox Live kit the first task you need to do is set up an account. To do this, a broadband connection is needed. More and more companies are offering broadband these days throughout America. Once you have that and jack into your Xbox’s Ethernet port, you need to create an Xbox Live account and gamertag, which is the online identity that you will be known as. You need a credit card at this point.

Later on, the plan is to have Xbox Live pre-paid “debit cards” which can be purchased at stores such as Electronics Boutique that will allow anybody without a credit card to still be able to pay for the monthly service charge or to buy downloadable content (updated rosters for sports games, new levels for RPGs, or whatever). And naturally, you have to have an online Xbox game. After that, it’s smooth sailing onto the console online gaming waves.

That’s potentially smooth sailing. The biggest problem for some is having access to broadband service in the first place. Not all areas in the continental U.S. have broadband service available yet. This cuts off a lot of potential Xbox Live gameplayers, but Microsoft is betting the house that broadband will become as common as dial-up Internet shortly. The (potentially) single hardest aspect of Xbox Live is configuring it to work with your broadband connection.

The easiest way to set up is to directly connect your broadband modem to the Xbox. The only downside to this setup is that it will not allow a connection from your PC to your modem at the same time that your Xbox is connected to the modem, which could be a problem if other household members want to use the Internet while you want to play Xbox Live. In that case, you need to connect a router or hub to your PC, Xbox, and modem. This is where the difficultly could come into play.

Unless you are an IT professional, you might require a crash course in networking to get everything connected properly. The single biggest amounts of posts seen on the Xbox Live forum on Microsoft’s Xbox website, www.xbox.com, is some variation of “how do I connect my PC and Xbox?”

I had great frustration trying to get my Xbox and PC all hooked up so both Xbox Live and the Internet was available at the same time. The instructions that come along with the Xbox Live kit seem so easy – deceivingly easy. I followed them down to the last detail. But yet, I couldn’t get it to work. I tried getting a router. Still nothing working. I tried a second router after returning the first one, thinking that would do the trick. Nada. Finally, I took the suggestion of my friend, which finally solved my dilemma lickety-split. What was the simple solution? Upgrading my PC operating system from Windows ME to Windows 2000 Professional.

Any operating system prior to Windows 2000 Professional will require vast networking knowledge that the average person probably doesn’t have. Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP have extensive networking capabilities already written into their code.

With the second router I had purchased, after upgrading I was connected just like that. My absolute recommendation for those who want to get onto Xbox Live is to have a good broadband connection, an Xbox-Live compatible router, AND either Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP. Don’t forget the Xbox and Xbox Live kit, which costs $50US but comes with a year subscription to Xbox Live and the voice communicator headset. The monthly Xbox Live service charge is supposed to be $10US after the initial year subscription runs out, but that hasn’t been written in stone yet.

Okay, after that, you are ready to go. Plug in a memory card (if your using one), the voice communicator, and log in to set up your account. Once that’s taken care of, pop in an Xbox Live game and prepare to play some fun online console gaming.

All through the beta test, I have had almost no problem playing three of the four games that are in the beta test (more on that later). Before I get into the games themselves, let me talk about one of Xbox Live’s unique features, the voice communicator headset (which is available to PC online gamers, but no other console has anything like it).

Instead of relying on a keyboard to communicate with opponents or teammates on Xbox Live, the headset allows for real-time communication. You want to taunt your opponent on NFL Fever 2003? Just blurt it out. Need to discuss strategy with a teammate in Unreal Championship? Just start blabbing. And if anybody gets annoying, you can simply mute them. There’s also voice masking, where you can change your voice to sound like any number of different things such as a male robot or a raspy voice or even like a baby (please stay away from this though. It’s really the most annoying-sounding voice out of any that you can select from and is rumored to be eliminated from selectability once Xbox Live is officially launched).

With a hard drive built in or the memory card you will be eventually able to download content from Xbox Live, potentially breathing fresh life into older titles with new characters, items, vehicles, skins, levels, or anything imaginable.

All right, that might all sound great but how is the gameplay on Xbox Live? There are four games being beta tested now: NFL Fever 2003, Re-Volt, Whacked!, and Moto GP. The only game I have experienced any problem with has been NFL Fever 2003. It seems to be related to the speed of not only your connection speed but also your opponent’s. If I (with a fast Comcast cable connection) start a game against someone with a fast connection, I don’t have any problem playing a lag-free game of Fever. But if one connection is slower than the other, there are annoying occurrences of lag and disconnections. While I have encountered the rare disconnect from Moto GP, Fever is the only game where it happens at a high rate.

If I had to rate the games in the beta test, I would have Moto GP first, followed by Whacked!, Re-Volt and then lastly NFL Fever 2003. Moto GP is a great online game. Up to 16 (yeah, 16!) racers take to the high-speed motorcycle racetrack. It’s much better than I had ever expected. Whacked! is a good, not great, warped game-show title in single-player mode, but once you go online the voice communicator really brings the cartoon violence gameplay to a higher fun factor level when good-naturedly taunting the other players in the game.

Re-Volt, like Whacked!, isn’t a great game but again like Whacked!, comes to life with the voice communicator. NFL Fever 2003 is much better when lag-free connectivity happens, but the disconnect and lag that I encountered make this game hard to be totally excited about. Sega’s NFL 2K3 is supposedly a much better NFL football game online (NFL 2K3 has Xbox Live functionality right now, but I haven’t had a chance to play it). For hoops fans, NBA 2K3 also supports Xbox Live.

Missing from the Xbox Live lineup is EA titles. EA has decided to only provide online support for its Sony line of games, which means Madden 2003, the newest rendition in the best-selling football series ever, won’t be available over Xbox Live. The same goes for the new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 from Activision. But that could all change next year if Xbox Live proves to be as good as advertised, and there’s no reason right now not to expect it to be.

Based on my online experiences, I would grade Xbox Live a solid B+. What has me (and other Xbox Live players) really looking forward to November 15 is the potentially awesome games that will be available on that date. The greatest game could be the Xbox-exclusive Unreal Championship, which looks incredible. If it plays as good as it looks, it could have Game of the Year written all over it. Ghost Recon and MechAssault are two other eagerly anticipated titles that might make the Xbox and its Xbox Live the gaming system and online service that will bring down the PS2. (Also scheduled for next year are Halo 2 and Project Gotham 2, two more titles that could attract online console gamers en masse.)

Don’t let anybody fool you, the era of console online gaming is about to explode, thanks to Xbox Live and Sony’s online initiative (and if it ever gets its act together, Nintendo and its GameCube). With a good, solid online game-plan and a lot of must-have titles in the loop the world of console gaming will never be the same.

- Lee Cieniawa

lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

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