To gamers under 20 years old, it’s probably difficult to imagine a world where you play without signing in. Where your save file isn’t stored in a cloud, ready to let you pick up where you left off. Or where a mass of games aren’t available at your command in a familiar online store. Well, just under 20 years ago, the short road to console gaming as we know it began with Xbox Live 1.0.
As part of our Enduring Legacy series, we covered the Original Xbox and discussed Xbox Live 1.0 as part of that legacy. We felt that the service had a legacy of its own and warranted its own, more detailed article.
Context Creator
Once upon a time, online gaming was an outlier. Something that the general population did not have the equipment or know-how to access. This remained true in console land for a lot longer that it did on PC, of course.
In the early-to-mid 90s games like Neverwinter Nights and later Doom II provided huge incentive for a huge number of PC gamers to try online multiplayer for the first time.
Like PC online gamine, its console counterpart also trickled in to gamers’ homes at first with finicky servers and add-on equipment keeping the n00bs offline.
Sega Dreamcast was the first console to ship with a modem. Though the bundled modem was dial-up in nature, it provided a relatively robust service. Sega ensured the service had a low-barrier of entry in terms of technical knowledge and advertised the service as somewhat integral to the Dreamcast experience. ‘Up to six billion players’ and all that…
False Start
For a number of reasons, SegaNet and Dreamarena failed to take off. Dreamcast itself started well with its superb launch line-up and appreciable technical upgrade over fifth-gen. systems. It started so well, in fact, that demand briefly exceeded supply. But in delivering that launch heat, Sega had managed to overlook their online service.
Sega could only say that Dreamcast’s online gaming service would arrive within twelve months around launch in the US. They revised this to mid-year 2000 shortly after 9/9/99. Sega announced their partnership with a national provider in Australia just a couple of weeks before its launch Down Under.
Sega came under fire in the UK when BBC’s Watchdog programme accused them of false advertising when no games with meaningful online play were available at launch there. The ailing games company were subsequently forced to remove mentions of online functionality from their advertising.
In Japan where it saw significant early success, it took almost a year after the console’s November 1998 release for Dreamcast’s first online game, Chu Chu Rocket, to launch.
False Dawn
By the time Sega were delivering the online capabilities they had promised, their moment had passed. PlayStation 2 was on the horizon and interest in Dreamcast in general had waned.
Along with the mistakes in marketing and rollout, the service itself, while groundbreaking, was primitive. Sega offered downloadable content for certain games but were limited by the tiny storage of the VMU.
Fewer than forty games offered online multiplayer. And with good reason – there was minimal infrastructure outside of the individual contributions of the developer. Those making games had to take risks, commit time and resources to a tiny fraction of Dreamcast’s tiny install base.
The Next Level
Meanwhile, Microsoft were already developing their first hardware entry into console gaming in 1999. The aforementioned hype around Dreamcast and its online functionality was still going strong. Dot com business were booming and Microsoft were at the centre of this online revolution.
Their browser had been brute forced into millions of homes through their nigh-on ubiquitous Windows OS. Their Hotmail service was living up to its name and MSN Messenger was demystifying real-time text communications and personal profiles for the masses.
Users had a singular online profile that reflected their offline being. They made friends who they could see in different virtual spaces. They could read personalised blurbs about new people they had just digitally met. The previously cold and functional interconnectivity of old was becoming more human, more approachable.
But perhaps most importantly, Microsoft were gaining invaluable experience in fostering these personal profiles to use across different components of an ecosystem.
Going Live
The as-yet-unnamed Xbox Live would tackle weaknesses they saw in Sega’s attempt at online gaming. First, they addressed the hardware issues – the pack-in dial-up modem with its costly per-minute billing and the limited storage space of the console’s VMU. In 2000, Microsoft announced the Xbox would be broadband only and a then-gigantic 8GB internal hard-drive would be standard in every box.
The 10/100 Ethernet interface was capable of absurd speeds by the standards of its day. Speeds much higher than necessary for online gaming. That overhead would be put to good use with voice-chat baked in for any developer to implement with ease. That extra bandwidth would also come in handy as far as Microsoft’s DLC plans were concerned.
Microsoft launched Xbox without its online service in North America in November of 2001. While Sega had overplayed their online hand before and at launch and faced censure, loss of face and yet more loss of public trust, Microsoft were mostly upfront about the belated arrival of their service. They promised their online service was coming in Summer of 2002.
When they finally unveiled Xbox Live at E3 2002, reception was highly positive. So positive that the public didn’t mind the delay of the service until November.
Friendship, Messenger and Being Screamed at by 12 Year Olds
Microsoft’s experience in putting the human touch into online communication would come in handy with Xbox Live. The centralised nature of the service meant gamers didn’t need to set up a new account for every game.
Giving users a name and permanent profile also meant they became more invested in their online presence. Little things like seeing names a player recognised from other games made it feel like a community.
Being able to find and add friends through their permanent profile gave it a proto-social network feel. Messages helped break the ice and then that voice chat could really shine.
Later updates added to the social function of the service. Live Now let you access your friends through your Xbox dashboard. Live Web let you see which of your friends were online from a PC. Voice messages were added.
Xbox Live 1.0 managed to do what it set out to do – entice ‘casual’ gamers into its ecosystem. The approachability that Dreamcast and most previous online gaming services lacked had been cleverly formulated by Microsoft and matched to hardware that made it a seamless experience.
A Paradigm Shift
Xbox Live 1.0’s place in shaping the modern video game landscape was not confined to bringing people together. The business opportunities afforded by the service were not lost on Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. That fat bandwidth, that permanent profile and that hard-drive were perfect to nickel ‘n dime consumers. Maps. Outfits. Weapons. Tiny morsels of content for gamers with a store that never shuts.
While selling content direct to the consumer via the internet wasn’t completely new in PC gaming, it wasn’t yet a huge cut of PC sales. The growth of Xbox Live 1.0 relative to total Xbox sales was impressive, that potential market for online sales was huge.
In March 2003, Microsoft opened their online store for developers to offer their DLC wares followed by an easier, more tempting general store available via the Live menu.
Following the success of selling add-ons direct to Xbox players, Microsoft introduced their Live Arcade. Despite the Xbox Live Arcade software needing to originally sent to gamers on a disc and the selection starting with just six games, the service generated healthy profits for the company, proving the value of a central store facing the consumer.
Was I a Good 1.0?
By 2005, Microsoft claimed they had 2 millions players subscribed at $49.99 per year. Helped, no doubt, by Xbox Live’s killer app, 2004’s Halo 2. Where Dreamcast had Phantasy Star Online, an RPG, Xbox’s attempt to pull people online was altogether more appealing to a wide audience.
The ease with which the gaming casual could slide online with Xbox Live played a huge part in popularising the service and online gaming in general. Its arrival as broadband adoption skyrocketed was part-luck, part-vision from one J Allard. Those forward-thinking social features began a new era of online gaming communities.
For better or worse, the DLC deluge of the 21st century started as but a trickle on Xbox Live 1.0. The ability to sell small games that wouldn’t have been worth printing to a disc became widespread there. It brought the paywall to online console gaming, one that exists on Xbox and PlayStation to this day.
Gone Too Soon
Another bittersweet part of Xbox Live 1.0’s legacy is in framing the temporary nature of online services. Despite the success of the service, Xbox dropped it just over seven years.
In April 2010, Microsoft shut down Xbox Live for their OG Xbox bringing its library’s online functionality, access to DLC and Arcade games with it. The resurrection of which (as part of Xbox’s backwards compatibility) remains massively incomplete and, outside of the most popular Xbox games, unlikely to continue further.
That was another in our Enduring Legacy series. We hope you enjoyed this expansion pack for Enduring Legacy of Original Xbox (how suitable). Were you an OG Xbox Live player? Any abiding memories? Any 12-year-olds have some particularly good insults about your mother? If you have an idea for a piece of gaming history that you feel deserves its legacy discussed, please let us know.
