"As a beta tester for the Xbox live service I have had a few weeks to cut my teeth on the service before launch and I have to admit that I was already hooked when all I had to play was a rather limited demo of Whacked, Moto GP Online and NFL Fever 2003. Now that the service has launched officially I have become even more addicted. Now, whenever I consider buying a new game I check to see if it’s Live enabled. If it isn’t, it must be incredible for me to even consider it. While I loved games like Halo, Oddworld and DOA3 before Live, now I wouldn’t necessarily buy them. It’s not that these aren’t great games but the truth is they spend most of their time on the shelf. I spent hundreds of hours playing all the games in my collection, but each one, after a short while would become tiresome and get relegated to “the shelf” from which few games return. Xbox Live has changed all this. "