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Microsoft's Xbox to Get Online Video-Phone Upgrade

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 May 2004, 06:00 CDT

By ANTHONY BREZNICAN

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Users of Microsoft's Xbox Live online gaming network can already talk to each other remotely while logged in - but soon they'll be able to see their fellow player's faces and "tickle" each other, too.

The announcement comes at the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo - known by the nickname E3 - which annually draws thousands of game developers to Los Angeles from around the world to showcase the latest in videogame technology.

Other announcements included a new partnership with Electronic Arts, which previously kept its hit sports games off the Xbox Live service, and a nostalgia service that would provide gamers with 1980s arcade titles.

Xbox's video-chat service will be launched later this year exclusively in Japan and eventually will make its way to the North American network, Peter Moore, an Xbox marketing executive, told The Associated Press on Monday.

"It will be a pilot program," he said. "We particularly like the ability to launch in Japan because of the superior infrastructure for broadband. It's a great petri dish, if you will, for what will be the future. ... You will not only be able to play against your friends, or talk to your friends - now you can actually see your friends."

Microsoft has not determined how much extra it will charge to download and operate software for the video-chat option. Regular Xbox Live subscription costs about $50 a year. Video chat also would require users to have a USB camera attached to their Xbox console, Moore said.

In addition, the host of the chat session will be able to select background music that all participants can hear through their microphone headsets - which are already available for players to communicate during a game.

Then there is "tickling."

"You can send a vibration to one of the participants in the chat session, which vibrates the controller they're holding," Moore said.

Microsoft also presented the end to a long-running feud. Xbox Live has a new partnership with Electronic Arts, the developer of such blockbuster sports titles as "Madden NFL."

EA, one of the videogame industry's dominant companies, has snubbed Xbox Live since its launch two years ago. Electronic Arts executives had said that they decided to exclude Microsoft because the company was demanding too much control over Electronic Arts' games and wasn't willing to pay for their use.

Most of those games were available for online network play through Xbox's top rival - Sony's PlayStation 2, which is the industry's best-selling console.

Sony says it has shipped more than 70 million PlayStation 2 game consoles worldwide. That compares with 13.7 million Xbox consoles shipped worldwide as of the end of last year. Microsoft's other main rival, Nintendo, said it had shipped 14 million units worldwide of its GameCube as of the end of last year.

The old combativeness was left behind Monday when Xbox's gaming chief, Robbie Bach, and EA's marketing executive, Chip Lange, promoted the new partnership, which will see "Madden NFL 2005,""NBA LIVE 2005" and "FIFA Soccer 2005" on Microsoft's system, along with the racing title "Need for Speed: Underground 2."

Those titles will still be available on PlayStation 2.

Neither Bach nor Lange would say how the two companies resolved their dispute.

"This is really being driven by the feedback we've both gotten from our customers, from the gamers themselves," Bach said.

Lange said EA received the same response from fans. "It's a been little like a broken record. People have been saying, 'Come on guys, figure out how to make this Xbox thing work,'" he said.

In the absence of any groundbreaking hardware announcements, the fledgling world of online gaming was expected to dominate this year's convention.

Microsoft's other announcement Monday was plans for "Xbox Live Arcade" this fall, which will feature low-tech titles for casual or nostalgic players - such as the card games poker, hearts and bridge and the primitive 1980s arcade classics like "Dig Dug" and "Galaxian."

The E3 conference officially begins Wednesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Meanwhile, top gaming firms Nintendo and Sony planned separate press conferences Tuesday to announce new products for the coming year.

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