Xbox Live

About Xbox Live

Xbox Live (trademarked as Xbox LIVE) is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It was first made available to the Xbox video game console. An updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at that system's launch. The Windows Equivalent is Games for Windows - Live that makes certain aspects of the system available on Windows PCs, with plans to extend Live to other platforms such as handhelds and mobile phones as part of the Live Anywhere initiative.

As Microsoft developed the original Xbox console online gaming was designated as one of the key pillars for the greater Xbox strategy. Sega had made an attempt to capitalize on the ever-growing online gaming scene when it launched the Dreamcast video game console in 1999, including online support as standard. Nevertheless, due to lack of widespread broadband adoption at the time, the Dreamcast shipped with only a dial-up modem while a later-released broadband adapter was not widely supported or widely available. Downloadable Content was available, though limited in size due to the narrowband connection and the size limitations of a memory card. The online features, while praised as innovative, were largely considered a failure, and the Dreamcast's immediate competitors, the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube did not ship with built-in network adapters.

Microsoft, however, hoped that the Xbox would succeed where the Dreamcast had failed. The company determined that intense online gaming required the throughput of a broadband connection and the storage space of a hard disk drive, and thus these PC-style features would be vital to the new platform. This would allow not only for significant downloadable content, such as new levels, maps, weapons, challenges and characters, to be downloaded quickly and stored, but also would make it possible to standardize bandwidth intensive features such as voice communication. Based on this reasoning, the console included a standard Ethernet port in order to provide connectivity to common broadband networks, but did not include a modem or any dial-up support, and its online service was designed to support broadband users only. Critics scoffed at the idea, citing poor broadband adoption at the turn of the century.