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History
Although it was not the first to attempt it, X-Band was the first device to support online play for video game consoles. It was developed by Catapult Entertainment, a Cupertino, California-based software company. The company was the result of a joint venture between Viacom, Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. and Nissho Iwai.
Based on a 2400 bps modem, which required about 1 hour to transfer 1 MB of data, Catapult Entertainment faced many challenges in providing lag-free gameplay. The main issue was keeping the game synchronized between the hardware, the different software revisions and the distance between players.
To achieve this, Catapult Entertainment’s engineers managed to customize the modem to reduce the transmission delay from 1/5 of a second to 1/30 of a second. The second technique was to synchronize the speed-control crystals of both machines to ensure the game ran at the same rate. Finally, the software versions of all supported games were taken into consideration, and the device compensated for any discrepancy between versions to ensure that the systems remained in sync.
The client-side system worked by manipulating the game’s memory in a way similar to the Game Genie. Catapult had to individually reverse engineer each game’s code, then develop a hack to intercept two-player activity so the game could be shared via modem. This represented a huge problem, but Catapult Entertainment hoped that game developers would include X-Band functionality directly in their upcoming titles.
X-Band gave the distribution rights to THQ and teamed up with EA to create promotional events around the X-Band.
Release
The X-Band was officially launched on November 17, 1994 for the Genesis. At launch, the X-Band retailed for $69.95, while a subscription to the X-Band network cost $7.95 per month. Initially, the system supported only 6 games (Mortal Kombat I & II, NBA Jam, Madden NFL ‘95 and NHL ‘94 & ‘95) and was available only in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and Atlanta. Catapult Entertainment launched a multi-million-dollar campaign with television spots on MTV, Fox and NBC television network shows, “NFL Football”, “The Simpsons”, “Married… with Children” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, among others. Radio spots ran in the cities where the device was available, and a print advertising campaign ran in the major video game magazines from October through December.
On Friday, November 25, Catapult Entertainment and EA organized a coast-to-coast Madden NFL ‘95 competition to promote the X-Band’s capability. The contest pitted Dean Cain, who played Clark Kent/Superman on ABC’s “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”, against Bobby Houston and Marcus Turner of the New York Jets. The event was co-sponsored by local radio stations KIIS-FM in Los Angeles and KISS-FM in New York.
The release was considered a success, and Catapult continued its expansion plan with the release of the SNES version in June 1995 and the addition of new supported games and cities. The service was announced for release on PC in fall 1995. No special modem was planned for this release. Free software would be available to all PC owners with a modem, and Catapult hoped to bundle it with new Pentium PCs. The cost of the subscription was announced at less than $10 a month.
In an interview in August 1995, Lynn Heublein, Business Development VP at Catapult Entertainment, explained that they were projecting 75,000 to 100,000 users by the end of the year. By that time, the cost of the modem had been reduced to $19.99, and it was available directly at any Blockbuster.
Demise
By 1996, the number of users was stagnating, and the company had difficulty turning a profit. Its user projections were far from being reached, as the service peaked at 15,000 users. Its hope that game developers would incorporate support for X-Band was also short-lived, as only the game Weaponlord, released in October 1995 for both the Genesis and the SNES, ultimately supported X-Band natively. To add more games, X-Band had to dedicate resources to reverse engineering the code, which required money it didn’t have.
The owner of Catapult Entertainment finally lost faith in its product, and in July 1996 it entered an agreement to sell the company to Mpath, another online video game network that specialized in PC online gaming.
By joining forces with Catapult, Mpath hoped to become a major player in the online market. Sega still had hope for this alliance and decided to support the X-Band network directly via the Sega Net Link for the Sega Saturn.
But all efforts were in vain: on March 16, 1997, Catapult removed long-distance play, and on April 30, 1997, the entire network was shut down.
Features
The X-Band modem supported a number of features, including:
- Up to four accounts per device, which allowed four different players in a household to each have their own account
- Each account would have its own:
- Nickname
- An avatar selected from a list of 50 different icons
- Optional password protection
- Buddy list
- X-Band mailbox (X-Mail)
- Players could request a match against players with similar skill or from their buddy list
- Players could send taunts and chat with each other
- All wins and losses were reported to a Global Ranking that everyone could see, and it was used to match players against people of the same skill level
- Two online newspapers, Bandwidth and X-Band News, with news on upcoming games, tournaments, etc.
- Parental controls to restrict usage during certain times of day, restrict long-distance calls, etc.