Go for Gold

Next-Gen Tournaments

Competition: It exists in nearly every fiber of the Xbox Live® experience. We play with a goal and the goal is to win, period. Even in unranked games, this simple goal is an overriding one. Heck, even in cooperative games the spirit of competition rears its head. Who got the most kills? Who spotted the roaming guard in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® Chaos Theory™, or who made the perfect assist for the alley-oop dunk in NBA Street V3. The ultimate expressions of this will to win are the official online tournaments available through Xbox Live. They offer legitimacy (and sometimes prizes) to your need to prove yourself, and give you the ultimate bragging rights over your fellow Xbox Live players when you win.

The Foundation
The first generation of Xbox Live laid the foundation for official online tournaments. Here are a couple of examples:

• Halo 2 World Championship: No game is bigger on Xbox Live than Halo® 2, and few games could possibly produce as many fanatical players. It was the Halo 2 World Championship that crowned the greatest living Halo 2 player. Unlike other World Championships (like the World Series or the Super Bowl), the Halo 2 World Championship is literal. It encompassed every one of the 24 Xbox Live regions around the world. The final round itself took nearly 24 hours to complete! In addition to worldwide bragging rights, the winner received a 50-inch DLP HDTV, a DVD Player, a badass trophy, a bling-worthy 24 carat gold Halo 2 disc, and $1500 in cold hard cash. Damn.
• Master Ninja Tournament: The Halo 2 World Championship was as good a tournament as can be desired for instant gratification gameplay, but the Master Ninja Tournament took us back to old hot-seat competition, and on a global scale. Instead of comparing high-scores on the playground with friends, you did so against the whole world in the ultimate test of Ninja Gaiden® skills. Moreover, the second and third rounds of competition came complete with free downloadable content, and significant content at that. New costumes, new enemies, a new weapon, faster gameplay, a whole new defensive move, a different camera system, and dedicated stages for the third round of the tournament.

Developer Ingenuity
The Halo 2 World Championship and the Master Ninja Tournament are just two examples, but they're examples of what is possible. With Xbox Live, we are no longer bound by technical restrictions, but instead can rely on the creativity of developers and publishers to create the best possible tournament for their game.

The Xbox 360 Effect
With the release of Xbox 360™, we will begin to see much more customization in games and even user-created content. This further opens the door for tournaments focused on a more social/creative angle. Perhaps instead of a tournament dedicated to winning a series of races, you might see one dedicated to the coolest decals, the best tricked out car, or perhaps a "Best Map" tournament for those that like to get down with a map editor. At this point specifics are just speculation, but the thrill isn't in a particular tournament, but in the possibilities that this next generation will bring.

The next generation of Xbox Live and the Xbox 360 is set to foster a sense of community like we haven't yet seen. With the matchmaking features, the different gamer zones, the prefer/avoid system, and tournaments dedicated to more than just gameplay, Xbox Live offers you more than just online play, but an online community as well, with friends, family, and gamers you actually want to play with.

Article by Alex McLain