News

January 8, 2004

 

GameZone takes a closer look at XSN Sports
by Tim Surette

 

Now that XSN Sports has been up and running for a few months, how is this revolutionary network working and is it delivering the online sports competition it promised?

 

At the 2003 E3 Expo, one thing stood out beyond the scantily clad women, high tech graphics, even the autograph session by Rowdy Roddy Piper.  As a visionary who sees the future of the gaming industry, the most impressive item I saw at the 3 day gaming-fest was the XSN Sports network from Microsoft, exclusively for the Microsoft Xbox and Xbox Live. As soon as the developers told me of the fusion of fantasy sports and sports video games, I nearly wet myself at the thought of trash-talking on the message boards and clawing my way up the standings in a private league of friends.  I said NEARLY wet myself.  Previously, the only online sports gaming consisted of searching for a game online, playing the game, and saying “good-bye.”  Pretty unfulfilling.  The result of the game did little except affect a gamers' ranking, a number that usually sat in the thousands.  

 

For sports gamers who love the thrill of playing the ups and downs of a long season, the cutthroat competition of a single elimination tournament, or earning top style scores on the slopes, XSN is a god-send wrapped in a pretty little box with a colorful bow being delivered by a buxom supermodel… the idea is THAT good.  The XSN Network allows for all of this to happen and requires very little effort on the participants’ part.  Having been up and running now for over four months (NFL Fever 2004 launched the site in late August), XSN has, as promised, been constantly changing and responding to gamers’ needs.  Having been launched as an experiment and virtually bypassing thorough beta testing, XSN is coming along quite nicely and looks to have a very promising future. 

 

XSN Sports (read my preview - http://xbox.gamezone.com/gzreviews/p22281.htm ) is an online community designed to make sports games play how they were always meant to be played – with intense competition against other human opponents. Using the Xbox Live service, stats, results, and competitions are automatically posted to the www.XSNSports.com  website via the magic of the internet.  From there, gamers can scout their competition and prepare accordingly, check tournament standings and schedules, and look for new competitions. 

 

Setting up an XSN account is about as difficult as opening a new e-mail account, except XSN won’t send you messages from Nigerian princes asking for your bank account number.  All one needs for an account is an Xbox, an active Xbox Live account, one of the XSN Sports titles, and a .Net passport account (Hotmail members already have one).  Once you’ve signed in to your .Net passport account, simply go to the XSN Sports website and sign up for an XSN account.  In order to connect your Xbox Live account and gamertag to your XSN account, the computer will prompt you for some information about your Xbox Live account, including credit card information from the card used to set up the Xbox Live account.  Once that’s all squared away, you’re ready to dive into competition.

 

After you’ve edited your profile with such tidbits as hometown and e-mail address (which you can choose to make visible or not), favorite sports teams, and a little something about yourself, you’ll be directed to your homepage where the bulk of your XSN existence will take place.  On this page, users can browse their stats, see their current competitions, or join new competitions with ease thanks to the user-friendly menus.  The homepage also allows easy access to the message boards that provide a wealth of information about tournaments, navigation issues and of course trash-talking and griping. 

 

Searching for and joining competitions is a breeze.  Just click on a game’s title and then on ‘Join Competition’.  Browse through the available competitions by type, start date, or number of players and let the games begin. 

 

NHL Rivals, NBA Inside Drive, and NFL Fever all offer seasons or tournaments.  Season mode splits up the teams (up to 16) in divisions just as they would in real life.  Each user is randomly put in conferences and divisions, and a schedule is selected according to the length of the season.  These games all need to be completed by a specific date (controlled by the commissioner), but don’t need to be completed in any specific order.  Once the season is completed, the playoffs begin and a winner is crowned.  Tournaments are currently single elimination format, with each series being either one game, best of three, five, or seven.  Tourneys are set up as simple brackets and can be completed in mere days. 

 

The Top Spin options are set up appropriately for the tennis circuit.  Top Spin allows Wimbledon-winning wannabes to compete in Seasons, Tournaments, and Tours.  Season is very similar to an NFL season, with players divided into divisions, etc. Tournaments are exactly what you think they would be (think U.S. Open), and Tour is a series of four majors, with a point value being given depending on the player’s finish in each major.  Seasons and Tours can accommodate up to 16 players and Tournaments can host a maximum of 32 players. 

 

Links 2004 and XSN yields yet more options.  Golfers can compete in one-on-one match play tournaments (winner moves on) or in tournaments.  The tournaments are all stroke play, and can have cuts after the second round, just as in the PGA.  There are plenty of options for each round of golf in Links, including the selection of courses, playing a full 18 or just 9, and the weather conditions and pin placements.  One major difference with Links from the other XSN games (aside from Amped 2) is the fact that the tournament rounds can be played individually instead of online against an opponent.  Each golfer merely needs to complete their round before the deadline, making participation a breeze. 

 

Amped 2 focuses squarely on accumulating tricks… no races, no head-to-head competition, just run down the mountain and try to outscore the competition.  Each competition can be decided by the highest overall score, individual run score, media score, combo score, or trick score.  These competitions usually last for days at a time.  Amped also allows scoring as a ‘pack’, where several boarders ride together to try and increase the overall pack score. 

 

Once a competition has been joined, it’s up to the players to arrange games by the desired deadline.  This can be done with e-mail, adding players to your Xbox Live friends list, or on the competition message boards.  Browsing the competitions, it’s obvious that a lot of gamers sign up for competitions but don’t play in them.  This is ultimately the only downfall of XSN, and of course it involves apathy and stupidity on gamers’ parts.  There is little that can be done about this, but the method XSN uses currently will have to do.  If a player has joined a competition only to realize he/she won’t make a deadline, there is an option to quit out of the tournament completely and forfeit all successive games.  This doesn’t penalize players who want to play, but can’t because their competition is a no-show.  In the event of a player not showing up for a game and not quitting the tournament, one player is randomly given the victory.  No-shows are given penalties to their sportsmanship rating, and commissioners can filter out poor sports when setting up a competition. 

 

Microsoft has been constantly tinkering with the layout of the site and making improvements based on users’ suggestions.  XSN is still an organic project, always growing and changing in order to make it better serve its users, and the extra work the developers have put into it works well.  There may be slight additions, like making the site work better with other browsers or refining game searches with better search parameters, but there always seems to little additions that are welcomed with open arms.  Because the XSN Sports network is a model sure to be copied by other companies (EA – I’m talking to you…), it was imperative that Microsoft go into this venture with an open attitude, and they did just that.

 

While XSN is a brilliant concept and should develop into a major portion of video gaming (Can someone say “Halo 2 tournaments and seasons???”), it still has a way to go (as of writing this, several issues came up with posting scores to the website).  Playing public leagues can be very frustrating as gamers often join leagues without playing a single game, ruining the fun for everyone.  XSN is a perfect fit for friends split across the country who want to play and compete together.  Unfortunately, most of my friends are more concerned with their playing with their 401k’s than NBA 2k.  Given time, XSN Sports will be a central gaming hub for the online community.  I know I’ll be there. 

 



For More Product Information
XSN Sports (XB)