When it comes to delivering quality content, the focus is commonly on delivering static media like music and video. But arguably the most interesting and powerful form of sharing and content delivery on the internet has long been in video games, which have built a broad user base.
While some solo games are compelling, computer allies and opponents typically become predictable and stale far faster than humans do. Developers of computer games took advantage of the internet to greatly increase the value of their games by connecting players from across the globe to each other. Each new player brings slightly different skills and personality to the table, which makes every game experience new.
As computer games took great strides in connectivity, console games lagged far behind. Early efforts at connecting players over the internet were plagued by a variety of problems, not the least of which was the relative difficulty of establishing a stable connection for a video game console at a time when connecting to the internet meant tying up a phone line.
So to get even a minimal multiplayer experience of 2 to 4 players, gamers had to either gather some friends at the house or drop quarters on a public arcade machine. And video game consoles were pretty much limited to playing games; over the course of the '90s they could play CDs and then DVDs, but they didn't offer anything special over other relatively cheap electronics.
Microsoft got into the video game console market with the original Xbox in late 2001, making it clear at the time that it was part of Microsoft's strategy to be at the forefront of multimedia convergence. Beyond just playing music CDs, the Xbox could store (what was then considered) a decent amount of music on its standard 8 GB hard drive.
Thinking ahead, Microsoft also included an Ethernet port on the standard Xbox which, combined with the hard drive, could be used to download new content after the games' release. A year after the release of the console, Microsoft launched the online service Xbox LIVE.
Xbox LIVE started with limited functionality, but nevertheless signed up more than a quarter of a million users in its first two months, and steadily gained popularity.
What LIVE did give to players, aside from the great leap of being able to reliably play console games with other people over the internet, was a single standard for voice communication and a unified identity and friends list for all games across the platform. This put Xbox LIVE on the leading edge even among computer games, few of which had built-in voice communication and all of which had walled-off communities.
In many ways, it served as a test run for an expanded and improved service when, in late 2005, Microsoft launched its next generation of video game console, the Xbox 360. By this time, all Xbox titles had some kind of tie-in to the LIVE service - online competitive play, downloadable content, and the like.
With continuous improvements in both form and function, Xbox LIVE started to grow much more rapidly. Far more gamers now have access to broadband, which has always been needed for LIVE, and most Xbox owners have the requisite hard drive or memory unit.
So what can you expect if you try out Xbox LIVE today? Quite a lot.
All Xbox 360 owners automatically have "Silver" level membership as soon as they connect. This level of membership offers basic services such as allowing you to create your "Gamercard" profile, make friends and chat both in text and voice. In fact, since the chat software is Windows Live Messenger, you can chat with people not just on other Xboxes but also on computers.
Silver members can also check out the Marketplace, in which all kinds of content are available for download - games, demos, even tens of thousands of movies, TV shows and music videos. Many of the videos are even available in HD. You can either use the website from your PC to queue content for download to your console next time you go on LIVE, or you can get content directly through the console.
However, some of that is paid content, and the coin of the realm is Microsoft Points. The Points system is a way of adding flexibility to the market: whereas previously transactions had to be done with credit cards with minimum purchases of about $5, now you can purchase bundles of Points that can be used to buy small amounts of content piecemeal, like a custom map or in-game accessory.
This gives developers an incentive to keep incrementally improving their games after release, keeping them fresh and extending their life beyond the built-in limits at launch time. And the prospect of fresh content without having to buy a whole new game encourages players to get online and join the gaming community, where they contribute to a network effect that improves the value of each game.
Silver players will also occasionally get a crack at online gaming, when promotional events allow. But aside from the one free month of full-feature "Gold" membership each Xbox 360 owner gets with the console, players have to pay for the full service.
That Gold subscription brings you the really big benefits of LIVE. Most importantly for most Xbox owners, you generally need a Gold membership to play online multiplayer matches. As you develop a group of friends, you can immediately see what they're playing, and easily invite them to play a game with you.
In ranked competitive play, LIVE connects players of similar skill levels to ensure that each gamer is being challenged but not consistently crushed, which again helps to keep a game interesting for much longer than in the days when gamers only had crude difficulty settings and their immediate friends.
Beyond gaming, with Gold, you get video chat as well as the ability to start "parties" in which you can share music and photos with friends. What makes that sharing particularly powerful is the ease with which content can be transferred to the Xbox 360, whether from computers on your home network (running Windows Media Player or Zune software) or directly from devices like the Zune player, digital cameras and USB drives.
Additionally, Gold-level members have expanded Marketplace privileges, including earlier access to selected content. And what's more, Netflix subscribers with Gold memberships can stream more than 12,000 TV episodes (some from the current season) and movies straight to their TV. This is a pretty phenomenal feature: delivering streaming content directly into the living room through a box that most people think of simply as a game console.
In short, Xbox LIVE is fulfilling much of the multimedia convergence vision that Microsoft had in mind a decade ago. As attempts to bridge the gap between the computer room and the living room go, this is impressive. For content consumers, it's an embarrassment of riches.
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