Several individuals passed on information pertaining to the new partnership between NTT Communications and Microsoft. What's that mean? We really fully know yet. Here is the spin, with video, from Xbox.com. This is an article from The Standard, an online e-business news site. Reports seem to agree that the Xbox's online strategy will not be properly launched until sometime in 2002... Which leaves some gamers asking what will occur with the games in the mean time, and whether they will be patched for multiplayer afterward.
It seems more likely to me that most if not all games may come net-playable, if possible, and be ready to take advantage of NTT's capabilities. Note that this deal affects users in Japan specifically... and has been related over the last couple of days from the Tokyo Game Show. We can probably expect for the Xbox's online strategy to be somewhat similar in the US, Canada (The North US Territories) and Europe but we'll have to see.