On Xbox Live's Past, Present, Future

Posted by simoniker on Monday July 5, 2004 @06:06AM from the to-infinity-and-beyond dept.

Thanks to TeamXbox for its interview with Andre Vrignaud from Microsoft's Xbox Live Platform Strategy Team, in which he discusses topics including user numbers (they're "on track" for 1 million subscribers by now, and "on average people are playing three hours a day (which is up from the 2.5 hours we saw a year ago), and the average number of people on Friends lists continues to climb - it's a little over 13 right now."), as well as the Xbox Live alerts through MSN Messenger ("In fact, you can look at these as being the first pieces of Xbox Live on Windows. If anything, people are pushing us to release more of Live on Windows as quickly as possible - and we're working on it!")

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MSN Messenger support? by u-238 · 2004-07-05 06:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's already been done - at least somewhat.

Programs like XBConnect give you a friends list as well as chatrooms where likeminded people can meet and organize a game.

It takes advantage of the xbox LAN connectivity (all xbox's have ethernet adapters included by default, and can be connected via hub/switch for large multiplayer battles) and emulates the packet structure, fooling the xbox into thinking traffic that is sent through the internet is legitimate and is taking place on a LAN. Most games that support LAN play work with it already; there is no need for an xbox live subscription at all.

Take a look for yourself