The concept of playing online was fairly new at the time. Arcades were still quite popular, and online gaming was not yet a household idea.
The XBAND modem was widely available at Blockbuster Video branches during its time. It retailed for $19.99, with additional charges based on usage. Two pricing plans were available. One had a monthly fee of $4.95 and allowed the user to connect to the service up to 50 times a month with each additional connection costing 15 cents. The other had a monthly fee of $9.95 and granted the subscriber an unlimited number of connections per month. Activities that consumed a player's monthly allowance of connections included dialing in to the XBAND service for matchmaking, downloading mail (called "XMAIL"), and downloading the daily edition of the two XBAND newsletters, one containing generic news and the other containing platform-specific information such as leaderboards and contest announcements. Players were also assessed a fee of $3.95/hour for connecting to opponents outside their local calling area; player-to-player connections inside their local calling area were free.
The modem features built-in storage for up to four users ("codenames"). It stores user friend lists, which can contain the codenames of up to ten of the user's friends; the users' XMAIL boxes, storing up to ten incoming and ten outgoing messages for each user; the users' rankings, win/loss records, and accumulated scores; a short profile section; and the user's avatar (chosen from 40 preset avatars). Text entry is done either through an on-screen keyboard or an optional XBAND keyboard add-on.
The client-side system worked by manipulating the game's memory in a way similar to Game Genie and third-party computer game modifications such as Multi Theft Auto.
A problem of most online services of the time was that the connection would be lost whenever a phone on the same line was picked up. The XBand operating system was designed to ensure that connections are not lost due to phone activity; in the case of call waiting, the system would alert the user to the call and allow the game to be resumed.
XBAND had an official website where a member could check any other player's statistics, along with other information and updates that were not available to view on consoles.
