Microsoft confirms 15 for Xbox Live

At its E3 press briefing last month, Microsoft announced that it would be launching an Xbox Live Arcade service this fall, and that Electronic Arts had finally agreed to support Xbox Live with a number of its major franchises. Further to those announcements, Microsoft's European office has released a list of 15 titles, most of which are scheduled for release this year, that will support Xbox Live and the recently launched Xbox Live Alerts service.

The list of games (with European launch dates) released today, most of which will come as no surprise, is as follows:

Full Spectrum Warrior - June 2004
Driver 3 - June 2004
Rainbow Six: Black Arrow - August 2004
Star Wars: Battlefront - September 2004
Burnout 3 - September 2004
Mortal Kombat: Deception - October 2004
FIFA Football 2005 - October 2004
OutRun2 - October 2004
Halo 2 - November 2004
Need for Speed Underground 2 - November 2004
Forza Motorsport - December 2004
Call of Duty: Finest Hour - Q4 2004
Unreal Championship 2 - Q4 2004
MechAssault 2 - January 2005
Doom 3 - When it's done

Xbox Live Alerts, for anyone that is unfamiliar with the service, allows Xbox Live subscribers to link their Gamertag to their .NET Passport and then receive game invites, information from Microsoft, and so forth, via e-mail, MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, or even a mobile device. Anyone wishing to sign up for Xbox Live Alerts can do so at Xbox.com.

Microsoft believes that over 150 Live-enabled Xbox games will be available before the end of 2004, and it hopes that the "nearly one million members" will soon become a round million. When Xbox Live reaches one million members it will almost certainly have reached the magic number in a third of the time that it took TiVo, Netflix, or AOL to achieve the same thing.