There were several press conferences for Xbox Live ahead of its launch, and both Thomason and Allard were involved. “J and I did a tag team on it,” says Thomason. Allard started out by painting the picture as only Allard could do. “He gave a very eloquent talk about the future of gaming and all the kinds of stuff that Xbox Live could enable, and he talked about the cost of the game for the subscription, and then my part was to talk about the four features… the four big features that were in Xbox Live. Analysts loved it.” The press events were a whole day that included wining and dining and lodging in fancy hotels.
“It’s Good to Play Together”
Beth Featherstone was working on first-party games, not marketing for Xbox Live, but she was aware of the message and the intention behind it. “We knew that it was important to have a presence on Live so people could do multiplayer. That was part of the whole… we had strategies and tactics around getting people to play together, and “It’s good to play together” was a tagline at the time.”
John O’Rourke knew that part of the challenge was to convince gamers that Xbox was a serious platform, and Xbox Live was a key element in that effort. “What we needed to do was to get into the space of their minds where they viewed us as an innovator and leader. At least someone to pay attention to and listen to versus just being another console there on the shelf. That was where our story helped.”
XBL at E3
At E3, they announced several Xbox exclusive titles developed to work with Xbox Live: Unreal Championship, MechAssault, Whacked!, NFL Fever 2003, and Midtown Madness 3, while additional titles include Counter-Strike, Star Wars Galaxies, Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder 2, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six RavenShield, XIII, NFL 2K3, Phantasy Star Online, MechAssault, Meltdown Madness, and NBA 2K3 as well as online enabled follow-ups for Project Gotham Racing, Amped, and Rallisport Challenge with a teaser about the new Halo game. It was also announced that 60 game companies had signed up to make games for Xbox Live.
Ed Fries took the stage and spoke about the power of online gaming. He said, “The games industry is working every day to create a new form of entertainment that is fundamentally more involving, more powerful, and more compelling than anything that has come before.” When Allard took the stage, he made this prophecy: “Within five years every important game will be online. There will be new categories of collaborative and competitive console games that are possible only online. The ability to download new worlds, levels, characters, weapons, vehicles, teams, statistics and missions will change the way developers think about creating games, and will change the way gamers play them.”
Gaming website IGN seems to have gotten the message. They ended their report on the E3 announcements by saying, “IGN will have more on Xbox Live because it could very well be the all-encompassing future of gaming.”