LIVE Launch Team Memories:
Challenges
Published November 8, 2007
On the fifth anniversary of Xbox LIVE, we checked in with some of the original team members for their memories of the big event, as they recalled some of the difficult challenges of launching such a revolutionary service.
What was the biggest challenge of launching Xbox LIVE?
Marc Whitten: I was happiest to see that we didn't launch it when we had originally planned—coincident with the launch of the console in September of 2001. Early on we got how big online could be, and why Microsoft had the ability to go deeper and go faster than others in the space. We had the chance to do something simple—put basic peer to peer connectivity in, simple online matchmaking, give games a low level TCP/IP stack and call it a day.
As we worked on the problem, our ambition just got larger and larger—credit Cam, J, Jeff Henshaw, Jon Thomason, Boyd and others with the big thinking here. When we faced the decision of whether to go with something minimal but serviceable at launch or to go big and go at the right time, we made the right call. Even then, the amount of work that had to be done in such a short time was amazing. They built the base infrastructure in the extra 12 months we afforded ourselves that has served as the foundation of the service to grow and flourish. Lots of this is stuff that users don't interact with directly—it's putting the right infrastructure in place.
We used to talk about LIVE as our theme park. Instead of us making the rides (that would be the game devs and publishers), we'd make the plumbing—make sure the trains ran on time, that one ticket got you in to everything, that there was plenty of space to add new rides, and that you had a consistent experience. It was the right call.
The team building Xbox LIVE knew in our hearts that we were on to something. We were gamers to the core, and we built the system that we wanted to play on but didn't exist yet. —Eric Neustadter
Patrick Mendenall: For me I think it was some of the discussions with publishers. It was really tough to sell online gaming on a console—especially for a fee—when people were used to it on PC free. You have to imagine that we were essentially talking about a major shift in thinking … Xbox LIVE was the first to do it and remains the best place to do it. We have MGS to thank for really setting the bar on what a good online gaming experience should be and Ubisoft for bringing their Clancy games over. We hit second gear when that happened.
Gary Thompson: As late as spring of 2002, the development team had determined that while we wanted to provide an online leaderboard service, we didn't have time to build one for the launch of Xbox LIVE and it would need to be something that came later. The game developers rightly pushed back, saying it was an essential feature and that we had to have it for launch.
With the combined brains and brawn of MarkV and DCaiafa, a viable and working leaderboard service was delivered in incredibly short order. At the time, we thought it might be necessary to scrap and rebuilt it in favor of something more robust to before the service really caught on. However, to Mark and Daniel's credit, the same system, with some optimizations, survived for several years and supported Halo® 2.
Clinton Fowler: It's the same every single release. You start with big eyes and a big stomach. You work hard for 6, 9, 12, 24 months and not until the last few weeks can you tell if you've nailed it or not.
Eric Neustadter: The single biggest challenge we faced in launching Xbox LIVE was the doubt in our dream. Xbox LIVE happened due to the dedication and vision of a relatively small group of people. We made numerous "go big or go home" style bets at the very beginning—broadband-only, ubiquitous voice, single friends list, and so on—and each of those had a horde of detractors. However, the team building Xbox LIVE knew in our hearts that we were on to something. We were gamers to the core, and we built the system that we wanted to play on but didn't exist yet.
As everyone on the team was a gamer, we designed Xbox LIVE features as all gamers would. It was a tough battle to convince our developer partners and even our high-level executives these features were important. —Lit Wong
Andre Vrignaud: My biggest challenge as an evangelist for Xbox LIVE (i.e., talking to partners) was getting people to buy into the vision. Believe it or not when we first starting talking to developers and publishers about LIVE way back in 2001, many simply couldn't believe online gaming could be viable on the console. Won't name names, but we had major publishers who insisted we could never deliver a service of sufficient value that people would be willing to pay for, or that people didn't want to talk when gaming, they wanted to type.
Even Marketplace was looked at with doubt—people struggled to believe gamers would want to extend their game experiences with downloadable content, and didn't believe they could make enough money on that content to cover their production costs and make a reasonable profit. Some of that was due to the small install base (after all, we were just launching!), but it's amazing to look back five years and see how Xbox LIVE has quite literally set the bar. Today developers, publishers, and gamers all see the value, and we see competitors absorbing features that were first defined on LIVE into their own gaming platforms. Friends List, Players List, Marketplace, Achievements, Gamerscore—all things we now see appearing on other platforms.
I'm excited to look ahead at the next five years and the new bar we'll set with LIVE—and I predict when we look back from the ten-year anniversary of LIVE we'll see a lot of those new features absorbed into the common online gaming culture.
Brian Lockhart: Moving everything from the devil-may-care, smalltime lab world of Betanet (where we ran the original Xbox LIVE beta tests from) out to the final production datacenter in Tukwila, Washington prior to launch. There was a LOT of work involved in moving from a small, nimble, closed environment that we ran from the test lab in our building out to a production datacenter facility a half hour drive away. I worked on the billing and account creation systems for LIVE and once you start hooking things up to actual banking networks and are preparing to handle real customer data, the caution levels go up exponentially and everything becomes VERY deliberate and time consuming (and for good reason).
At times I thought we were going to miss our deadlines, but it was all worthwhile when we created that first "real" test account using my AMEX card and I was able to login and verify my billing statement online. For the curious, the first test gamertag created on LIVE using a real credit card was "Bart Simpson."
Mike Lucero: There were several moments that I thought, what the hell are we thinking?
- E3 2002: This was the E3 before we launched—the question was, how the hell are we going to pull this off at a tradeshow? And how are we going to do so on a shoestring budget? We ended up pulling an old 16-pod semicircular display out of mothballs, Marc Whitten wired up a faux-Xbox LIVE system on the show floor and Russ Glaser made it all look pretty. We had non-stop lines for Unreal Championship (not quite the same for NFL Fever, although we had some professional football players face off in the booth). We ended up winning a best-in-show award that year.
- Beta in 2002: Big question was, are we going to get enough people to sign for a beta that you have to pay for to give the service a real test so it won't fall over when it goes live in the fall? We needed at least 30 thousand subscribers to pull this off. Much to our surprise we got 160 thousand people to try to qualify to get into the beta (oversubscribed by over 400%!). Then the next big moment of fear—they're all going to play Revolt and think, "this really sucks." Somehow people thought it was fun and kept playing. Then the next moment of fear—they're all going to play NFL Fever and think, "this sucks." And yet they played and they played. And they talked and they talked on their Xbox Communicators. And they monitored their stats and gave us really great feedback. Who'd have thought?
John Smith: Biggest challenge of launching Xbox LIVE for me? Convincing partners that multiplayer gaming would move from what was traditionally on the PC to the console and that when it did we'd make it bigger and broader than anyone thought possible through building a simpler consistent universal interface … oh ya, we were also the new kids on the block … with no track record of success and well behind Sony, Nintendo, and SEGA was recent road kill. Least we not forget that the biggest franchises we take for granted today like Halo, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty were ALL PC Franchises before they came to console … they're ALL now clearly console franchises. Funny how people forget. Also interesting to think about Unreal … as most folks no longer think of that as PC anymore.
Jim Yagelowich: The biggest challenge was in simply believing that you can innovate and create something as easy to use and compelling as Xbox LIVE (especially in the early days when we considered supporting analog modems—remember those 56 Kbps Hayes/USRobotics analog modems for your PC!?). From a networking standpoint, a lot of people just don't understand 'networking' technology (TCPIP addresses, gateways, DNS settings, creating an account, etc)—we wanted them to simply be able to plug their console into their home network (or modem) and have it 'just work' in a very consumer-friendly way (and networking is *never* easy!).
One of the biggest (scariest) obstacles I feel we overcame were the various issues that routers (home gateways, NATs, modems) introduce. These devices don't handle the various internet traffic/protocols in the same manner and can wreak havoc on matchmaking and cause dropped connections to occur during gameplay. That's the main reason why we created the Xbox LIVE Certified router/NAT/modem program—and encourage our customers to use the devices we've listed (as 'Certified') so they can have the best online experience.
I wish all networking devices worked more consistently, but the reality is they don't. I'm just glad that we identified the issue and came up with creative ways of making these devices work as seamlessly as possible (and interfere less with the gaming experience), because without this Xbox LIVE would not have achieved the leel of success it has achieved.
Lit Wong: The biggest challenge was that we were on the cutting edge, designing a new online service that we don't have tail lights to chase after. We made big bets as early as 2000 that we would include a network jack on the back of Xbox1, require broadband, single login identity, cross-game friends list and messaging, make voice available across all games, use hard drives to enhance game play, support custom sound tracks, and making it an overall closed-system for tight, total integration.
These are things we take for granted nowadays on Xbox LIVE (like oxygen and water), but many of these are still not standardized on other platforms. As everyone on the team was a gamer, we designed Xbox LIVE features as all gamers would. It was a tough battle to convince our developer partners and even our high-level executives these features were important. It was even tougher to cut many of the cool features that we wanted to do but didn't have time for. There are features in the original specification document that are still just coming out. But in the end 99% of the decisions (bets, cuts, etc.)we made back then were good.
Jerry Hook: Original LIVE: getting all the region offers completed with no tools outside of excel and my blood sweat and tears over looking at ID maps, tax rates, regional descriptions. Arrrrgh! 360 LIVE: MS Points system. Getting a fully integrated stored value model, with partner integration, new business models completed in time for 360 launch came down to the wire.
Interview by TriXie
