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Microsoft, which launches the online service for its Xbox game console Friday, hopes to reshape attitudes about entertainment.
By CHIP CARTER
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 11, 2002
Brian Brubaker doesn't fit the stereotypical profile of a video game player. He's 34, highly educated and teaches science at Wharton High School in New Tampa.
And he's just the man Microsoft is looking for.
In fact, Bill Gates and company are hoping Brubaker and thousands more like him will sign up for Xbox Live, Microsoft's foray into the online console gaming market, when the service launches Friday.
"This is a decadelong-plus bet," said Scott Henson, Microsoft's director of platform strategy. "The whole reason we got into the business was not to create a new console, the Xbox, but to create a shift in entertainment."
Microsoft will be the second player to dive into relatively untested waters. Sony's PlayStation 2 online service went up in August. Nintendo is watching and waiting, though the first GameCube title playable online -- Sega's Phantasy Star Online, accessed via Sega.com at $8.95 a month -- was released recently.
Xbox Live is available to anyone with an Xbox via the system's built-in Ethernet connection. A $49.99 plug-and-play starter kit lets you log on to the Xbox network where you can find challengers for online games, talk live with other players or download upgrades and other goodies for your Xbox.
The 25,000 gamers who beta-tested Xbox Live form a core audience that should easily reach 100,000 by Christmas. Several hundred thousand of the starter kits will be in stores this holiday season.
Microsoft's prime focus will be winning over settled (read: nonfickle) players with disposable income -- as opposed to the zits-and-soda crowd with slim wallets and ever-changing tastes -- to make Xbox Live a hit.
"Over the next 12 to 24 months, our goal is to bring in more and more casual gamers. We need to blow the potential audience wide open," Henson said. "We want to move beyond the niche of video games today -- 16- to 26-year-old males -- and put Xbox on the map on the same scale and level of engagement as television and the Internet are today."
Microsoft selected Brubaker and the other testers from more than 100,000 applicants for the hotly contested, and unpaid, beta test. (In fact, players had to pay for the start-up kit in addition to the cost of their Xboxes.) The test run began in September.
The number of beta volunteers overwhelmed the company, with those left out grousing on Xbox Internet communities about the selection process.
"We learned about 10 different ways not to do things," said Henson, who has spent the past 18 months working with publishers and developers on business models, marketing strategies and technical specs.
He said that in his decade at Microsoft, the Xbox Live project is "easily the largest and most challenging and most rewarding of all the things I've done, including Windows 95."
Brubaker, the teacher, spends an hour or two playing a couple of games four or five nights a week. He said the beta test has been impressive. Microsoft, guided by surveys of and comments from testers, has ironed out most of the prelaunch bugs as Friday's startup approaches.
"They're working on it," Brubaker said, "and they seem genuinely concerned" about problems.
With Xbox Live, Microsoft has embraced online gaming much more heartily than its competitors. "I think Microsoft is trying to create this family, community kind of thing -- it's outstanding," Brubaker said. "The people on Xbox newsgroups are diehards already."
Judging from comments on some of those newsgroups, gamers like the statistic-based rating systems that ensure they compete against players at their own level, meaning sports games don't turn into one-sided slaughters.
Voice communication between multiple players adds new depth to Halo, the futuristic shoot-'em-up that's Xbox's biggest hit (and soon to be a Hollywood movie). And no one's griping about the fact that Xbox Live is accessible only via a high-speed Internet connection such as cable or DSL and not a slower phone connection.
"You don't spend a lot of time searching" for opponents, Brubaker said. "It's meant to be a very simple and quick process: I'm on, I found someone, let's play. If I want to talk to you, I can."
The chance to talk with other gamers is a big part of Xbox Live's appeal. It was also a major factor in Microsoft's decision to make the service accessible only through the Xbox's built-in Ethernet modem, which requires a broadband connection.
"If you can't talk and interact with your competition, you might as well be playing (against) the computer," Henson said.
Brubaker agreed, saying, "It's kind of cool to talk to other people from around the country while you're playing: 'Hey I'm in Tampa,' 'I'm in Minnesota.' "
While the overall response to Xbox Live has been overwhelmingly positive, there are still obstacles to overcome.
For starters, mammoth gamemaker Electronic Arts is squabbling with Microsoft over the structure of the Xbox Live community and is withholding its games.
EA's phenomenally successful Madden NFL Football series is the most popular in sports gaming history and a cornerstone of Sony's PS2 online service.
But Xbox players will have to settle for Sega's NFL 2K3 or Microsoft's NFL Fever. This year's Xbox version of Madden isn't playable online, as is the case with other EA games.
Gamers will be able to play games such as Ghost Recon, a Green Beret saga from Tom Clancy; Sega's NBA 2K3; and Unreal Championship, an Xbox Live-only version of the PC online smash first-person shooter.
EA wants more control over its online services, as it has with PS2 Online. Unlike Microsoft, Sony doesn't maintain a central community for its online players; gamers simply buy the $40 adapter and log on to sites provided by third-party gaming companies.
And the Xbox's broadband-only connection squeezes an already limited market, though it undoubtedly provides a better gaming experience.
Microsoft hopes the first version of Xbox Live will have 10-million users by the semi-planned end of its cycle -- 10 years, maybe a little longer.
"We have a strategy to be humble and realistic about what we're doing: Crawl, walk, run," Henson said. "We're barely at the crawl stage."
Still, he called projections of hundreds of thousands of users by this time next year "very, very low ball."
In the early going, Henson said Microsoft and gamemakers profit simply by selling more games to players who might not buy without online playability. The general consensus has it that Microsoft will, after the first year of service (included with the starter kit), charge gamers about $10 a month for Xbox Live. And as the community develops, there will undoubtedly be additional fees charged by third-party content providers for some games.
Henson said despite the billions of dollars the industry earns annually -- more than Hollywood box office receipts -- video games are still "in a comic book niche."
That will change, he saids, when the industry "starts thinking about competitors (being) The West Wing and Friends and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've laid the foundation for that."
"We have multiple billions of dollars going into this in the next five years," he said. "We are wickedly focused on the Xbox Live network. I really do believe that we're at the edge of something huge."
-- Chip Carter is a syndicated video game columnist who lives in Tampa.