First Global Xbox Live Tournament Champion to be Crowned at X03

Gamers from Throughout World Compete in South of France Event

Microsoft today announced that X03, the European press event in Southern France, will be the location of the world's first Xbox Live global gaming tournament. On September 17, the emerging champion will walk away with a trophy, a year's worth of Microsoft Game Studios titles, including "Halo 2," "Fable" and "Project Gotham Racing 2;" a copy of "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3" from Ubi Soft and the bragging rights associated with being the best Xbox Live gamer in the Western world.
 
But it's more than player reputation on the line. Gamers from the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands will be representing their countries and competing for national pride. Cultural and language barriers will fall by the wayside as cross-Atlantic rivalries are settled with some friendly, online tactical warfare.
 
To enter the tournament, gamers simply need to pick up a copy of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder" for Xbox and start fragging enemies on Xbox Live immediately. Players can check their progress worldwide by viewing the leaderboards on Xbox Live. The top player in US and Canada as of 11:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, August 26 will win travel, accommodations and entry to this year's X03, held in a secret location in the South of France near Nice. X03 gives European games press, retail representatives and selected consumers the chance to test new Xbox and Xbox Live-enabled games heading to Xbox this Christmas and beyond. Now it sets the stage for one of the hottest competitions around. Details on the European portion of this tournament will be announced next week.
 
After conquering their own countries, the ten finalists will then be competing for the ultimate title of the top Xbox Live gamer in the Western world. The tournament finals will be held on September 17 at X03. The game to decide it all will be the Xbox exclusive "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3," available to these lucky few a full three months before its scheduled release. All finalists will receive trophies plus a copy of "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3" from Ubi Soft. For more information, please visit the tournament page on the newly relaunched Xbox.com on Monday, August 25 at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/tournaments/. 
 
Xbox Live, which launched in the United States Nov. 15, 2002, allows gamers to play multiplayer Xbox games with other gamers worldwide via a broadband connection. With a built-in hard drive and Ethernet port, the Xbox console is the only video game system built from the ground up for online gaming. Xbox Live enables gamers to easily find their friends; talk to other players during gameplay through the Xbox Communicator headset; download current statistics and new levels and characters to their Xbox hard drive; and play online -- all exclusive features to Xbox Live.
 
Xbox (http://www.xbox.com/) is Microsoft's future-generation video game system that delivers the most powerful games experiences ever. Xbox empowers game artists by giving them the technology to fulfill their creative visions as never before, creating games that blur the lines between fantasy and reality. Xbox is now available in North America, Japan, Europe and Australia.