Where the real competition starts. (Microsoft Xbox Live)

Name: shuttlex

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Product:	Microsoft Xbox Live
Date:	10/12/06 (447 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Another way of playing games

Disadvantages: £40, not suited to all games

Back in 1999 Sega took the step of implementing online gaming into the Sega Dreamcast system. This was at the time when most people were accessing the internet over dial up. Due to the limitations of technology and the inclusion of a built in modem, this added excessive costs to the system with only a few games to take advantage of such as Chu Chu Rocket, yet even such a game of its simple nature suffered from excessive lag over dial up.

Within recent years, with the increasing availability and lowering prices of high speed broadband internet, Microsoft stepped in with the introduction of the XBOX Live service. This was perhaps the first time online gaming had successfully been implemented into a video game console.

With the release of the XBOX 360, the second generation of XBOX Live is now running, this time split into a 2 tier service: the free Silver subscription and the paid for Gold subscription. Silver limits you to browsing the marketplace and downloading trailers and demos. Signing up to Gold unlocks the core feature: competing against others over the Live network.

Upon connecting the XBOX 360 to the internet, gamers can immediately sign up to the Live service. The sign up procedure takes less than 10 minutes and guides you through a series of forms to complete such as address, telephone and preferred gamer tag. Users can also plug in a standard USB keyboard to fill the details quicker. At the final step one can opt for either the free Silver subscription or paid for Gold subscription. However, selecting Silver automatically upgrades you to a free 1 month trial anyway. Once the 1 month trial is over, then you can simple enter the code from the Live Subscription card.

Overall, the XBOX Live network is impressive. With one gamer tag supported across all games, there's the ability to maintain a friends list and keep track of what games your friends are playing. Pressing the guide button during play, one can access a list of all the gamer tags recently encountered online. This is useful for adding people to your friends list, checking out their gaming history, number of gamer points or reporting them for abuse. Some may however see this as invasive of their privacy. Communicating with others is also very simple with the option to send messages or start a voice chat.

At times online gaming requires a lot of patience. Titles such as Battlefield 2 tend to offer a smooth experience, since the servers are hosted by the publishers, you can jump into a game at any time. However many games are reliant on peer to peer hosting which can require patience when searching for a suitable host. If the host has a lagging connection this results in frustration for anyone connected. It should also be noted that online peer to peer gaming tends to be free with PC gaming.

XBOX Live provides a very entertaining experience, making it easier to play against gamers of a similar skill level and offering further replay value. Although Microsoft have been pushing the Live service as the feature to distinguish the XBOX platforms, in reality the benefit of XBOX Live Gold Subscription is determined by one's preference for games. For certain genres such as war, strategy, racing and sports games, there's plenty of value in playing online. Many games such as sports and puzzle titles still provide a more entertaining and rewarding experience when playing against people in the same room. Many will find the initial online experience as having a novelty value which will eventually wear off. Online gaming is still no substitute to the social interaction of playing against people in the same room. Adding to this, certain genres such as fighting games require pings much lower than what broadband can technically offer. This is partly the reason Sega has opted not to implement online play into the future release of Virtua Fighter 5 on the PS3.

It would be wrong to believe that the future of gaming is all online since many single player titles such as Dead Rising provide a very entertaining experience for which implementing online play would be irrelevant. For many games solo play still contributes to the core experience with any online feature being a bonus. Whether the service is worth an addition £40 a year, this depends on your preference for games. XBOX Live is highly recommended as a complimenting feature however one shouldn't see it as a replacement to the gaming experience. This is perhaps one reason Sony is confident in the PlayStation 3 platform despite Microsoft's head start with XBOX Live.

Summary: highly recommended but not essential