I think most people are probably aware that when Microsoft launched Xbox Live in 2002, it didn’t invent online gaming for consoles. But here’s a fun little factoid for you: Xbox Live launched 19 years ago, and the earliest examples of pioneering online work on console actually happened almost the exact same amount of time prior to the introduction of Live. Back in the early Eighties, both the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision had some kind of online option, albeit in an extremely limited capacity — services like GameLine and PlayCable for the two classic consoles didn’t allow for online interaction with other users, but they did allow access to digital storefronts where new games could be downloaded and played. Low uptake and high costs (both for suppliers and players) meant neither lasted particularly long, and when they were discontinued amid the 1983 video game crash, it sent a message to other console creators that the world wasn’t ready for this kind of tech just yet. Which, in fairness, was probably pretty accurate. Both Sega and Nintendo would later experiment with online tech in Japan at the end of the decade (again, without much success), and continue into the Nineties where both started to make a mild amount of progress — the Sega Channel for Genesis proved moderately popular in the US considering the cost of the game download service, and the ingenious Super Famicom add-on Satellaview used networking in a whole new way, with playable games broadcast at specific times almost like TV shows, leading to novel experiences such as being able to play Zelda games with live narration and voice acting. The next generation saw the two firms (as well as several others) still failing to make online gaming on console happen, and it wouldn’t be until the release of Sega’s Dreamcast in late 1998 in Japan that we would see our first major console to be released with online capabilities out of the box. This was something of a Hail Mary from Sega, a gamble on the world finally being ready for online console gaming in order to give Dreamcast an edge over the upcoming PlayStation 2, with a lot riding on this after Sony’s previous console had trampled the Saturn into the ground. Online services were limited to simple web browsing and news updates via various regional services in the first year, until the release of frantic puzzle gem ChuChu Rocket! which offered online competitive play. Over the following few years, Dreamcast games would expand online content in line with a lot of what we see today — Jet Set Radio offered an early example of user-generated content, with players able to upload their own custom graffiti or download tags created by others, while maraca-based music masterpiece Samba de Amigo would introduce the mainstream to DLC by offering several additional tunes for download. Then we had the heavy hitters, genuine classics like Quake III Arena and Phantasy Star Online, and even though only around 30 games ended up making use of Dreamcast’s online functionality, these are the games you’ll hear cited as many people’s introduction to online gaming on console. I, for one, dread to think how much I racked up in phone bills playing PSO for hours. The problem with online play on Dreamcast, however, was that everything was limited to the individual games — you’d have no constant online handle, no system-level friend list, no integration between the online capabilities of the system and those of the games themselves. Xbox Live would change all of that.We’ve established that Microsoft didn’t invent online console gaming, then, but it sure as hell defined it as we know it today. Rolling out in November 2002, Xbox Live would solve pretty much all of the issues other services had faced up to this point, and MS made it pretty clear even from before the official launch of Live that it was all-in on online. The firm even went one-up on Sega, with Xbox being the first stock console to offer ethernet connectivity (Dreamcast actually did get an adapter later in its life) for smoother play over broadband — still a relatively fresh and unadopted technology at the time, so this decision was met with some derision from those who didn’t believe the online infrastructure was there to support broadband console gaming. It was a bold, future-facing play by Microsoft, sure, but you kinda have to think that one of the biggest tech firms in the world probably knows a thing or two about growth rates of emerging technology, and MS found itself well-placed to ride that wave. In addition to a faster broadband connection, Xbox offered another advantage over previous online console attempts: a built-in hard drive. Developers could create games for Xbox Live safe in the knowledge that every player would have fast speeds and storage space, paving the way for things like sizeable DLC and more complex online interactions.Xbox Live had (almost) everything that had been absent in previous attempts — persistent online handles for players, a system-level friends list so you could game with buddies much more easily, online leaderboards, integrated voice comms, and more, all rolled into one uniform package. It didn’t hurt that the big games soon started to come out in force, either. Games such as Dreamcast favourite Phantasy Star Online, tactical shooter Rainbow Six 3, god-tier racer Burnout 3: Takedown, and a little game called Halo 2 all absolutely blew up, to the point that if you had an Xbox and you had broadband, you had to have Live. These amazing games (and plenty of others) drove subscription numbers up quickly, and Live reached a million users a little over 18 months after launch. A year later, that number had doubled to two million. This thing was going places, and with both of the Xbox’s competitors requiring additional hardware to get online (and honestly not really having the online libraries to make doing so worthwhile), Xbox was able to clean up in the online gaming space thanks to the console’s inbuilt ability to connect and play with others.The service’s offerings actually grew further in 2004 with the introduction of Xbox Live Arcade, a disc-based store launcher that allowed users access to a selection of retro and indie titles for a small fee. It all started to come together, and when Microsoft rolled out its follow-up console, the new and improved Xbox Live was there from day one, along with XBLA, with everything rolled into one thanks to that early groundwork in online gaming on the original console. Xbox 360 had it all, and more… which is probably a good place to leave things for now, actually, as we’ll be getting to that “and more” part in tomorrow’s article. No prizes for guessing what I might be talking about — let’s just say it’s the reason you’re all here in the first place. On TA, I mean. Not alive. That would be a weird article to run on a gaming site.So then, who was there at the start? Any OG Live beta testers in here with the orange memory unit to prove it? Favourite experiences on Live in the early days? Let’s hear it!
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