Xbox goes Live

Life

1 April 2005

Xbox owners will soon be able to play online with the arrival of Xbox Live to Europe. The service is described by Microsoft as ‘a comprehensive online game service fully dedicated to fast-action, always-connected broadband gaming experiences’.

And therein lies the catch for Irish gamers. Broadband. So there will be no online gaming for dial-up customers. For those with the prized broadband connections, Xbox Live players can not only play online once they hook themselves up to the service, they can also find their friends, talk to other players during game play through the Xbox Communicator headset or download new levels and characters to their console’s hard drive.

Although the service is being made available available in the UK, France and Germany as part of the Xbox Live Test Drive phase from the end of November 2002, the service proper will not launch at retail until 14th March 2003 in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

Those wishing to avail of the service can get the Xbox Live Starter Pack, with an estimated street price of EUR59.99. The pack includes the Xbox Communicator headset, a 12-month subscription to the service and special versions of Xbox games MotoGP and Whacked.

At first the online service will only support five Xbox Live-exclusive games in Europe: Unreal Championship; MechAssault and Whacked!; Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon; and MotoGP. However, next year will be a different story. More than 50 Xbox Live-enabled games will launch, including Halo 2, CounterStrike, Star Wars: Galaxies, and Project Gotham Racing 2. 

Gamers will have their own unique ID known as gamertag, which will be used for all games across the global service. A ‘friends list’ allows players to find their online friends and invite them to play.

As of yet, there is no date for the service’s launch in Ireland.

28/01/2003

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