Playbox (video game)

Playbox is a 3D action-adventure platform video game developed by Kuboian game studio All Star Interactive Media. It is a loosely-structured game with a variety of different single-player and multiplayer modes, and also the player to play as multiple different games each with their own unique abilities. The game was published by Cradle Network.

Playbox was released in Kuboia and the United Kingdom on 22nd November, 2002, the rest of the PAL region and Japan two and three weeks later respectively, and in North America on 6th April, 2003. The game was released for both the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox. The Xbox version had exclusive online functionality through Xbox Live, and was among one of the first games to use it, though it has been discontinued following the closure of the servers in April 2010.

Development
Development on Playbox began in 1999, initially for the Sega Dreamcast, though development was later pushed to the GameCube due to the underperformance of the former console. The game was designed to have a lot of replay value and so the player had a lot of different things to do and could continue to discover new parts of the game even after hours of playing it.

Though originally scheduled as a GameCube launch title in Europe, the release of Playbox was delayed in order to take advantage of the upcoming Christmas holidays, and in order to allow time for development on an Xbox version, which took advantage of the Xbox Live online play, being amongst one of the first titles to feature the servers. A PlayStation 2 version was considered, but cancelled for unknown reasons.