Service
The concept of playing online was, at the time, fairly new. Arcades were still quite popular, and online gaming was not yet a household term.
The client-side system worked by manipulating the game's memory in a way similar to Game Genie and third-party computer game modifications such as Multi Theft Auto.
The XBAND modem was widely available at Blockbuster Video branches during its time. Two pricing plans were available. One had a monthly fee of $4.95 and allowed the user to connect to the service up to 50 times a month with each additional connection costing 15 cents. The other had a monthly fee of $9.95 and granted the subscriber an unlimited number of connections per month. Activities that consumed a player's monthly allowance of connections included dialing in to the XBAND service for matchmaking, downloading mail (called "XMAIL"), and downloading the daily edition of the two XBAND newsletters, one containing generic news and the other containing platform-specific information such as leaderboards and contest announcements. Players were also assessed a fee of $3.95/hour for connecting to opponents outside their local calling area; player-to-player connections inside their local calling area were free.
The modem featured built-in storage for up to four users ("codenames"). It stored user friend lists, which could contain the codenames of up to ten of the user's friends; the users' XMAIL boxes, storing up to ten incoming and ten outgoing messages for each user; the users' rankings, win/loss records, and accumulated scores; a short profile section; and the user's avatar (chosen from 40 preset avatars). Text entry was done either through an on-screen keyboard or an optional XBAND keyboard add-on.
XBAND also had an official website where a member could check any other player's statistics, along with other information and updates that were not available to view on consoles.
At its height, XBAND had 700,000 subscribed members.
Read more about this topic: XBAND
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“In any service where a couple hold down jobs as a team, the male generally takes his ease while the wife labors at his job as well as her own.”
—Anita Loos (1888–1981)
“It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?”
—Public Service Announcement.