Microsoft Corp. took the wraps off Xbox Live, its online game service, in 2002 with ambitions of one day seeing millions of players compete online.
Today, more than 8 million people -- about 1 in 5 Xbox and Xbox 360 console owners -- subscribe. Many pay $50 a year for a souped-up version of the service, giving Microsoft a steady revenue stream as it seeks to post its first annual profit in the video games division after investing more than $6 billion in the business since it launched the Xbox in 2000.
Those subscribers have logged 3.2 billion hours playing games on the service, equivalent to more than 365,296 years of alien-zapping, grenade-tossing and general time-wasting. Lately, they've also rented movies and bought TV shows such as "South Park." In December, players also will be able to download games such as "Halo," "Psychonauts" and "Fable," which were previously available only as boxed discs.
Microsoft has made some progress in broadening Xbox Live's appeal beyond young males. About a quarter of its players are female, up from 10% in 2002.
Microsoft wasn't the first to introduce online gaming on the console. Sega of America had offered Internet-connected players the ability to chat and find opponents through its Dreamcast console in the late 1990s before pulling the plug on its hardware business in 2000. But the Redmond, Wash., software giant can claim to be the most successful at it so far.
Sony Corp., Microsoft's arch nemesis, isn't sitting still. Its PlayStation Network has more than 3 million subscribers, and the Japanese company plans to substantially boost that number next year when it unveils a sleek online look called Home, a graphically rich virtual world that lets players create realistic avatars, hang out with friends, watch movies and play games.
Robbie Bach, the 45-year-old president of the division that runs Microsoft's games and music business, talked with the Los Angeles Times before the five-year anniversary of Xbox Live.
When Microsoft introduced the Xbox, some saw it as a Trojan horse, a gateway into consumer's living rooms for other forms of digital entertainment such as movies and music. How has that panned out?
The irony of this is that it wasn't the way we thought about things back then. When we were starting with Xbox in 2000, the team was very focused on producing a great gaming experience. When Xbox Live became more successful than we ever planned, it opened a lot of new opportunities. We realized we had something bigger than games. If it's a Trojan horse, it's with hindsight, not foresight.
