When Microsoft opened Xbox Live in North America on 15 November 2002, it was asking console owners to do something most had never done: pay a subscription to play games over the internet. It made the offer on its own terms. The service ran only over broadband, every player had one name across every game, every starter kit came with a headset for talking to opponents, and Microsoft ran the whole network itself, which Edge compared to “a walled garden”. Those rules were what made it attractive to developers, and in Britain, where hardly anyone had broadband, they were also what held it back.
Fast facts
- Launched: North America, 15 November 2002; Europe, early 2003.
- Price at launch: a starter kit for the price of a game, $50 or £32, with a headset and twelve months’ subscription.
- Requirements: an Xbox and a broadband connection; the console’s hard disk stored downloads.
- Identity: one Gamertag per player, carrying the friends list.
- Subscribers: about 500,000 by late 2003; more than 1.2 million by early 2005, as reported at the time.
- Later: Gamerscore, achievements and a free Silver tier with the Xbox 360 (2005); now the Xbox network.
A closed network
Edge set out what the starter kit bought in October 2002. A single “Gamertag” identity made it easy to manage lists of friends, “easy matchmaking modes” included a quick match “that chooses opponents on the basis of optimal latency”, voice masking could disguise a player’s voice, and the hard disk would take “a wide range of free and purchased downloadable content”, starting with a roster update for Sega’s NFL 2K3. Microsoft ran the servers and took royalties from publishers, which, Edge noted, was “certainly not to the tastes of Electronic Arts”.
American developers liked the certainty. Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software, told Edge that December: “I like knowing for certain that every Xbox Live player has a headset. I like knowing that every Xbox Live player has a broadband connection. I like knowing that every Xbox Live player has a hard drive for me to give them free content after launch.” Glen O’Connell of the British publisher Rage liked that the service would let a company its size “compete directly with the likes of EA without the vast expense of setting up dedicated servers”. Microsoft’s own targets were larger than the market it was entering. J Allard aimed for “tens of thousands” of subscribers in 2002 and “hundreds of thousands” by the end of 2003, and Edge reported Microsoft’s hope of 10 million by 2007.
Early games built around it included MechAssault, a battle between giant robots for up to eight players online, which Edge listed in February 2003 as an Xbox Live game.
Britain without broadband
The broadband rule counted for more in Europe. Edge reported in December 2002 that “approximately only four per cent of homes in the UK” used broadband. After the service opened in Europe in early 2003, the small magazine ugvm counted “about 50,000 European Live! customers”, which “compares badly to the 250,000 or so US subscribers”, and blamed “the low proportion of Europeans who have a broadband internet connection”. In Britain the broadband provider NTL offered an Xbox Live broadband package with Microsoft, which, ugvm found, was its standard broadband package “with official support for the Xbox thrown in for an extra fiver a month”. The television presenters Ant and Dec hosted the British launch party; take-up was slow, ugvm wrote, “despite Ant and Dec hosting the launch party — or more likely because they hosted it”.
Growth was steady rather than spectacular. At Microsoft’s X03 event in the autumn of 2003 the company announced some 500,000 subscribers worldwide, a number Edge said “failed to impress” against the 10 million Microsoft had talked about.
Halo 2
Halo 2, released in November 2004, changed that. Bungie’s sequel was built for Live, and within weeks Electronic Gaming Monthly’s readers were saying that “every Xbox Live owner is probably going to be playing Halo 2”. By early 2005 the Australian Official Xbox Magazine reported more than 28 million hours of Halo 2 played on Live, at about 91 minutes a session, and a service of more than 1.2 million subscribers. Its hold was strong enough that an Edge reader complained in 2005 that since Halo 2 every new Live game “gets shunned after its first few days on the shelf”.
The Xbox 360
The Xbox 360, launched in November 2005, made Live part of the console. Anyone with broadband got Xbox Live Silver free, with a profile, messaging and the online shop, the Marketplace; playing most games online needed Xbox Live Gold, at $50 a year, which EGM described as “basically what Xbox Live is now”. By then, the magazine said, the service had about 2 million members.
Each player’s gamer card now showed a Gamerscore. “You earn points by playing games and completing accomplishments,” EGM explained. “What accomplishments? That’s up to the individual games.” These achievements, set by each game’s developers, became a routine part of Xbox 360 games, and Sony gave the PlayStation 3 its own equivalent, trophies. The Marketplace also sold small downloadable games under the Xbox Live Arcade name: Retro Gamer found itself playing new shooters such as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved alongside Midway’s Gauntlet, Robotron: 2084 and Joust, and Capcom’s online Street Fighter II.
Later years
Xbox Live for the original Xbox closed on 15 April 2010. The service carried on through the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X and S, and in the early 2020s Microsoft began calling it the Xbox network. On 14 September 2023 Xbox Live Gold was replaced by Xbox Game Pass Core, a subscription that kept online multiplayer and added a library of games, and in October 2025 Core was renamed Game Pass Essential.
Sources
- Edge issue 115, October 2002, pp. 7–9: the US launch date, the UK launch early in 2003, the starter kit, Gamertags, matchmaking, voice masking, downloads, royalties and EA, J Allard’s targets.
- Edge issue 117, December 2002, p. 49: Randy Pitchford and Glen O’Connell on Xbox Live; the “10m subscribers Microsoft anticipate by 2007”; four per cent of UK homes with broadband.
- Edge issue 120, February 2003: MechAssault listed as an Xbox Live game.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 178, May 2004: the original MechAssault’s eight-player games over Xbox Live.
- ugvm issue 5, April 2003, p. 4: the European launch, subscriber numbers, NTL and Ant and Dec.
- Edge issue 130, December 2003, p. 15: Microsoft’s X03 event and its 500,000 subscribers.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 187, January 2005, p. 20: readers’ forum on Halo 2.
- Official Xbox Magazine (Australia) issue 37, February 2005, p. 23: Halo 2’s hours played on Live; issue 38, March 2005, p. 19: more than 1.2 million subscribers.
- Edge issue 155, November 2005, letters: Halo 2’s grip on Xbox Live.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 193, July 2005, pp. 68–70: the Xbox 360’s Live Silver and Gold, Gamerscore and achievements, and about 2 million members.
- Retro Gamer issue 21, 2005, p. 7: Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360.
- Edge issue 225, March 2011, p. 92: achievements and trophies as a routine feature of games on both consoles.
- Wikipedia, “Xbox (console)” and “Xbox network” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the closure of Live for the original Xbox on 15 April 2010, and the rename to Xbox network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_network
- Xbox Wire, “Introducing Xbox Game Pass Core, Coming This September”, 17 July 2023 (web, secondary): Gold replaced by Game Pass Core on 14 September 2023. https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/07/17/xbox-game-pass-core/
- Xbox Wire, announcement of the Essential, Premium and Ultimate plans, 1 October 2025 (web, secondary): Game Pass Core members moved to Essential. https://news.xbox.com/ja-jp/2025/10/01/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-premium-essential-plans/