| Set On Stun |

What do you mean I can't play Fusion Frenzy online anymore?!

For all the folks out where who are still playing  Star Wars Battlefront, and Halo 2 online well, that will end soon.  Come April 15 (tax day) Microsoft is pulling the plug on the online component for their old green machine games. Forget the fact that Halo 2 is still one of the biggest online multiplayer success stories ever the company has deiced that with a new decade comes time for a change. The original machine, almost 10 years old itself still has a lot of titles out and  some of those may still  get a decent amount of online play.

But,  Xbox says, “We’ll continue to evolve the service with features and experiences that harness the full power of Xbox 360. To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox V1 games.”  That’s from XBL manager Marc Whitten.

Translation: If you and your two buddies  are planning to do some Halo 2 multiplayer  April 16, then you’re SOL.

Is this a bad thing for Microsoft? Not entirely. The fact that their on demand service, which they offered up last year, let’s you download old Xbox games that may or may not have that live component, then you’re basically stuck with whatever the single player version is. So it’s kind of pointless to make these games available if you remove half a chunk of the usability that you would  get from the online play  like with Halo. What Whitten says makes sense though. If they’re trying to transition to strictly 360 titles then why hang on to the support  for games that go back several years for a system from the last decade?

Who’s Playing These Ancient Games?

The real question to  Microsoft is does it really take that much effort to continue offering live support for original Xbox games? If not then why shut it down? And even more importantly why offer these games as part of your classic library if you’re going to expect gamers to spend $20 or $30 bucks, memory space but then not allow them to  play the game online? It seems a bit … stupid. Solution — don’t offer those games.

Looking at the the current games in the XBL on demand library  you’ll see that most of their downloadable old (Xbox 1) games are primarily games that were single player hits. So essentially for this online gaming element,  we’re talking about folks who have some semblance of a videogame library and still own some of these original box titles or for some reason still use the original Xbox and buy “new” games at bargain bins and Criag’s list. As to how big of a market that is 5 years into the 360’s existence, who knows?

From a customer reputation standpoint they may lose favor with those old school gamers but it looks like Microsoft feels fairly secure that they’re not going to irk that many folks with this decision and they’re still giving them a few months to relive the old game glory days before pulling the plug.

So with the bombshell of the 360 elite price slash officially dropped it’s time to look back at how this all started. Hard believe that it was only 8 years ago that the world was introduced what was then called the green machine.  The first Xbox was dropped November 15, 2001 and to the delight of gamers everywhere we got to meet the one and only Master Chief. With Bungie’s system seller Halo being part of the launch, Microsoft had created a machine that was primed to enter the fray full force against Nintendo’s Gamecube (released the same time) the the behemoth that was then (and to some degree still now ) the Play Station 2.

Thankfully for us Microsoft opted to go with this name rather than  one of the many other names developers had come up with including Direct X. Would this be the machine to beat the unbeatable PS2 which already had a full year and some monster numbers of success?  That depends on who you ask. For Microsoft this was a new area of competition that would get them into the realm of videogames and on a path they have been driving full speed on ever since. It’s interesting to note that in the second generation of systems Microsoft, still stinging from being behind the 8-ball on their first attempt, released the 360 a full 2 years ahead of it’s competitors.

Before RROD s

So what did Microsoft’s first Xbox have to offer other than Halo? Well first and foremost it didn’t have hardware failures like it’s future offspring. This was a hardy machine. As far as gaming though that first year was kind of sketchy.In addition fighting the fight against the covenant early offerings included, Dead or Alive 3,  Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding, Fuzion Frenzy and Project Gotham Racing.

As the green machine (named for the background dashboard screen and not the color of the console) matured some more significant titles became available and near the end of its run some exceptional titles made this a machine to be reckoned with including of course Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden and Fable. Eventually the system beat out the  Gamecube and took the number 2 spot out of the three consoles. Maxing out at around 24 million units sold, the console was discontinued in 2006 after the 360 took it’s place in 2005.  During it’s 4 year run it had some standout performances in terms of titles despite it’s considerably smaller library than Sony or Nintendo.

What really took root though was that it was during four-year run Microsoft honed it’s online gaming platform, eventually giving Xbox Live a major edge when they launched the 360.  Short-lived -on many accounts and discontinued too soon considering the glitches that first year of 360, the original Xbox paved a path of success for Microsoft in gaming that continues to grow. With all of the things they’ve done in the last two years with the 360, we can definitely expect to see more than just a new gaming console in the next few years. Potentially what we may be in store for is a digital delivery system and the early beginnings of a device that doesn’t just offer gaming, but social media, online gaming and game development applications as well.