Xbox Live

Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox system in November 2002. An updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at the system's launch in November 2005, and a further enhanced version was released in 2013 with the Xbox One.

The service was extended in 2007 on the Windows platform, named Games for Windows – Live, which makes most aspects of the system available on Windows computers. Microsoft has announced plans to extend Live to other platforms such as handhelds and mobile phones as part of the Live Anywhere initiative. With Microsoft's mobile operating system, Windows Phone, full Xbox Live functionality is integrated into new Windows Phones that launched since late 2010. The service shut down for the original Xbox on April 15, 2010, and original Xbox Games are now playable online through local area network (LAN) tunneling applications such as XLink Kai, and Project Insignia

The Xbox Live service is available as both a free and subscription-based service, known as Xbox Live Silver and Xbox Live Gold, respectively, with most features such as online gaming restricted to the Gold service.

Why It's Live

 * 1) It contributes to make online multiplayer popular.
 * 2) Tons of Xbox games available for digital distribution in Xbox Games Store, Games on Demand and Xbox Live Arcade.
 * 3) Allows you to share and compare your Gamerscore with other users.
 * 4) It supports online multiplayer modes of each game.
 * 5) It saves the progress of the game through cloud.
 * 6) Has a selection of first-party and third-party applications and entertainment services.
 * 7) It gives you user information.
 * 8) Many updates for it.
 * 9) If you don't feel like buying the games in the arcade, there's plenty of demos that you can try out (examples: Splosion Man, Banjo-Kazooie).
 * 10) There is a selection of games which can be played if you have Gold called Games with Gold.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The PC versions of both Games for Windows – Live and Windows Store are horrible services.
 * 2) The popularization of online multiplayer has also led to some very negative things in gaming such as overuse of microtransactions or big publishers like EA now pushing for pay-to-win multiplayer only games to become the norm.
 * 3) Overpriced: You have to pay $60 for a year.
 * 4) Some of the games from Games with Gold can only be played if you have Gold on your Microsoft Account. However this can be bypassed if you have a Xbox 360 with a Gold account.