Five years ago today, Xbox Live started as a method to match players up with competition over the Internet. Today, the eight million member service offers movies, TV shows, downloadable demos, full versions of arcade games, game patches and updates, video chat and of course, a matchmaking service.

To mark the event, GameDaily BIZ talked with Aaron Greenberg, Group Product Manager for the Xbox Live group. A well-known staple of the group, Greenberg focuses on the Xbox Live service offerings from arcade to videos and movies. While Xbox Live celebrates its birthday today with free themes (including one to mark the day), a free arcade game, competition against game developers and a gift of 500 points to any player who first played the service back in 2002, we wondered about how the Xbox group is reflecting on its success and its history to date.

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Aaron Greenberg: We've always had a tight connection with our community and maintain a two-way dialog with our community that's unprecedented in the industry. We wanted to do something for everyone. So we're giving away 500 free points to members who were on the service at launch and I believe that there are hundreds of thousands who are eligible for this as well as giving a free arcade game to every person on the live service today.

BIZ: Why give away Carcassonne to U.S. players?

Greenberg: We picked Carcassonne because we think that it's a game that reviewed really well and wasn't a title that everyone already owned. Also, it was a high-quality title that a lot of people hadn't yet experienced and when they got it for free, they would feel like they got a good game.

BIZ: Eight million users and available in 26 countries is an amazing achievement. You've sold over 13.4 million units worldwide; that's pretty amazing to have over half your users connecting to your service. Any plans to make that 100%?

Greenberg:Well, we probably don't ever get to 100%. When we originally launched Xbox Live in the prior generation, we kinda peaked at about 10% penetration and now we're well over 50%. I think that it speaks to the online connectivity and social nature with playing against people online and the ease of the experience. If I wanted to get together with my friends five years ago, we'd have to be in the same city, at the same time, agree to where and what place to meet at, pay for parking. Now I can just hit a button and put on a headset. Those friends can be any place in the world and we can chat, play games or message each other from our living room. As this service continues to evolve, we're seeing that it's more about that social interaction and that's driving the interest in the service and less about that competitive online multiplayer service of the early days.

BIZ: Looking back at the early service on the original Xbox and moving to the Xbox 360, the service became a completely different animal. How much influence did the Live team have during the 360's development?

Greenberg:Well, there are a lot of people who work on the service but I think that the majority of the work really happened before the launch of the Xbox 360. It was about building an online console from the foundation up. So a lot of things you can't do or experience unless you build them from the very beginning. But the fact that we had Live built into console, that we had this consistent presence across every game—friends invites, messaging, voice, achievements, gamerscore, every single game give them out—that gave us a foundation in a console. And really, to be an online console whether you're watching a movie or playing a game or downloading content, I think that this was brilliant. And I'm not taking credit for that. For example, say you were building a house; installing air conditioning in the house during early construction is going to be more efficient than choosing to add air conditioning to the house 4-5 years later. So we're fortunate that we got it right in the beginning rather than just adding improvements and changing the wallpaper or the furniture.