April 29^th, 2002 (12:00am) - Gamespy recently had the chance to interview Microsoft’s David Hufford about the upcoming Xbox Live online service. Here is the rundown of what was discussed in the interview, and what we know about Xbox Live so far.

-Finding Users-

Hufford states that there will be a "matchmaking" service for gamers to meet up with any type of player that you want at any time, and if you want to speak to friends you already know, that can also be easily done. Hufford describes it as sort of an "instant messanging" service within the games.

-Progress So Far-

Server rooms are up and running right now, and developers are creating and testing titles on them already, and have been doing so for the last six or seven months, in fact. More details should be revealed at E3.

-Features-

Aside from voice-chat, there are other core features (such as the match making service) that will be assured to be enabled on any and all Xbox Live titles.

The in-game switch feature that have sent rumors abound is false, though. There is cross-game notification in the works, i.e. if you are playing NFL Fever 2003 and your friend goes online and is playing Unreal Tournament, you can know, and pop in Unreal Tourny into your Xbox and go meet up with him/her if you want.

-Security-

MS is working on ways to deal with cheaters. Cheating will be banned, and Microsoft is determined to keep it out of the service, so, hopefully, you can be sure your game progress will be secure.

And for every Xbox Live title you own, you will use the same single password for each, so no long list of passwords to keep up with.

-E3-

"Well, we’ll announce some games at E3. We know that the service side is super important; you’ve got to support it with kick ass games. So at E3 we’ll ’show a little leg’ and unveil some new titles."

-Pricing-

One of the most important issues to consumers is, of course, pricing. Right now, it is unclear how much the service will cost, but we do know it will be a monthly fee, which will most likely work in favor of the more enthusiastic and hardcore online gamers, but the casual gamers only interested in one or two online titles may get screwed over, unless the monthly fee is considerably cheap, or based on how many titles you have.