Besides 'puppy' voice, Xbox Live gets rave reviews

The Associated Press

SEATTLE -- Joshua Johnson loves the action, the graphics and the excitement of playing with other gamers through Microsoft Corp.'s new Xbox Live online video-game service.

"When I say 'awesome,' it's an understatement," said Johnson, an 18-year-old college student who is testing a "beta" prerelease version of Xbox Live.

But there's one thing he could live without: the high-pitched squeaky voice some gamers select to mask their real voice in dueling with him.

"It's just a nagging puppy. It's annoying," said Johnson, who lives in Rialto, Calif., and attends California State University at San Bernardino.

Not to worry. Now that the guts of Xbox Live are in place, Microsoft is tweaking the details.

With less than two months before Xbox Live officially launches, Microsoft has been busy making last-minute revisions, setting policies on dealing with cheaters and even making the high-pitched squeaky voice sound deeper and more natural.

Xbox Live is the video-game console industry's most ambitious initiative yet, coming from one of the industry's most aggressive players.

Here's the idea: Instead of having to invite someone over to play video games at home, gamers can issue challenges online, connecting with anyone in North America with an Xbox, a subscription to the service and a broadband connection.

Not only can gamers square off in hockey and car racing, but they can trash talk over headsets as well.

The service will launch in North America on Nov. 15 -- the one-year anniversary of the Xbox console launch. Microsoft is also planning to launch Xbox Live services for Japan on Jan. 16. A European release date has not been announced.

But now that Microsoft has built it, will players come?

"The market is barely ready for it now," said Michael Gartenberg, research director of client access and technologies for Jupiter Research. "This is still pretty much the frontier."

Early on, he said, "the hype is going to far exceed any level of reality."

Internet high-speed connections today are generally reserved for personal computers, not video-game consoles.

PC-based online games -- particularly multiplayer games like EverQuest -- are already popular and point to the consoles' potential.

International Data Corp. estimates that the online games market for both computers and consoles will hit about $300 million in 2002, growing to $41.8 billion in 2005.

Besides, quickly turning a profit on Xbox doesn't seem to be a big concern to Microsoft.

From the start, the company better known for its Windows operating system and Office suite of workplace software has been bleeding money on sales of its Xbox consoles.

It is investing $2 billion over five years to Xbox Live and other improvements. And it is initially offering the Xbox Live service, complete with a headset for communicating with fellow gamers, at a bargain price of $49.95 a year.

Meanwhile, competitor Sony already has jumped into online gaming. Last month, Sony started selling connectors to let customers hook Playstation 2 consoles to a Sony network, where players can compete in a variety of games.

The company, which has sold about 11 million of its consoles in North America, hopes to sell about 400,000 adapters by the end of the year.

Microsoft has sold more than 3.9 million consoles since they launched Nov. 15.

The company is also fairly bullish on its prospects, with plans to distribute at least 100,000 communicator kits to retailers for the launch, said Scott Henson, Xbox director of platform strategy.

Still, there are details to take care of.

Since the beta test started in August, Xbox programmers and managers have been monitoring what the 10,000 testers like Johnson think of the service.

They have been talking with network and broadband providers about making sure they can handle the player-to-player connections.

They're debating if, how and when to identify gamers who cheat by pausing games for so long that their competitors tire of waiting.

They are closing loopholes that allow gamers to misrepresent their rankings in the football game.

And they're monitoring message boards and e-mail feedback on ideas for tournaments or other added services that they hope will keep gamers addicted enough to pay a monthly subscription fee somewhere down the line.

"We have this crawl, walk, run approach," said Cameron Ferroni, director of Xbox Live content services.

But the company is still figuring things out as they go, Ferroni acknowledged. "It's uncharted territory."

Not to mention fixing the annoying high-pitched, squeaky voice.

"All the voices are cool except for that one," said Michael Aguirre, a 21-year-old music student at Fresno City College. "You get three or four people with that same voice and it's the worst."

Otherwise, he's pretty happy with the service.

"I could be playing for two, three days straight," he said. "I'm not exaggerating -- it's straight playing. I take a 15-minute break to shower or eat or something."