The idea of having organized tournaments for game players is finally reaching the Xbox 360 console with its own dedicated service. Ahead of Microsoft"s Xbox 360 press event, Virgin Gaming announced this morning that it has partnered with Microsoft to power Xbox Live Tournaments, which will give Xbox 360 players a chance to compete in a variety of different matches against others in a number of Xbox 360 games.
The press release states that Xbox Live Tournaments " ... will offer skill-based events and challenges for players of all levels, including a wide variety of free-to-play or paid-entry tournaments and head-to-head matches in top titles from leading publishers." Details are scarce but the service is supposed to launch sometime later in 2012.
Virgin Gaming, co-founded by Virgin"s Sir Richard Branson, launched in 2010 and since then has helped to power tournaments for a variety of game publishers such as EA Sports, 2K Sports and Ubisoft. So far, Virgin Gaming has played host to tournaments for over 1.3 million gamers and has offered features such as automatic reporting of match results, a skill ranking system and more for gamers participating in their matches
With an organized tournament service created for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in the worlds, the idea of paid and free organized multiplayer tournaments could soon expand into the mainstream gaming experience, rather than just a small subset of gamers.
Source: Virgin Gaming
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