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Xbox Live Beta Report
mrquackers writes "CNN has an interesting article up giving its thoughts from the Xbox Live beta test. The system actually gets high marks for its ease of connectivity, matchmaking and voice communicator, but the writer doesn't seem convinced that Microsoft's going to have a big success with this (though he vows to do a better job of backing up that statement "next week")."
Its hard enough to get people to pay for music. I'm not sure why MS thinks it will be any different for people playing games. I can't imagine this will be cheap. (Sounds kinda like game porn. "give us your credit card number and we'll charge you for the minutes.....till your card runs out....")
I wonder how long it will be until someone has figured out how to set up an 'illegal' P2P network to 'illegally' play your games online without paying?
All your likely to hear for the first few weeks is a flood of ten year-olds yelling "All your base
*voice mute*
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green pink yellow red blue orange potatoes
Interesting article. Microsoft has never been so much an innovator than an integrator, taking existing technologies and bringing them to the masses (bugs included).
Kits for chatting live with online oponents have been available for some time, even though I've never had the chance to use one. What Microsoft is doing is standardizing this feature on the XBox Live. It is a huge bet for them, but perhaps the only way to save a system that is lagging behind the competition.
The question is, of course, whether the new "experience" will be "compelling" enough to save their virtual ass. Is there a slashdotter here that has already experienced online chatting? The reviewer says it actually is a good feature, is that your opinion too?
But then, even if this feature proves to be that good, Microsoft will be facing another challenge: scaling it up. As the reviewer said several times, the architecture has yet to be tested at full-charge.
As for me, sorry Microsoft, but some of your competitors have a game catalog that is much bigger than yours, including hundreds of old games that are available for a bargain. Yes, I am cheap.
You will be able to block some rude people if you want so that you can't hear them.
This headset thing is really cool. However:
Do you think it's occured to microsoft the repurcussions of the fact that they are going to be relaying voice unfiltered?
Unlike text, there is no realistic way they can filter voice for obscenity.
Do you think they've considered what that means? All the gaming communities i've seen, everyone seems to be pretty free with using just random obscenities. They will probably be more so when communicating requires nothing more than muttering under your breath, instead of having to type out stuff.
How long do you think it will be before that Xbox Live thing comes with a little note saying "Warning: To prevent exposure to adult language, it is suggested children do not use the headset component of this product."
Forget about the obscenity factor.. how long is it going to be before little Johnny's mom in California realizes she can talk to little cousin Jimmy's mom in New York.. without paying a long distance phone bill?
Moderation totals that amuse me for one of my posts: Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Underrated=1
I'm on the beta and I'm quite impressed. Two games were included in the beta: NFL Fever 2K3 and Re-volt. Both games completely suck. The amazing thing is that it doesn't matter. Despite the face that both games suck the easy voice chat feature completely redeems them. Everyone is required to have a decent connection which means less drop-outs. Also, since players can't edit the game files there are no cheaters.
Neither of the included games has any team-play aspect so chat generally is reduced to three phrases: "Fuck...I crashed", " Ha ha. I passed you"and "I win!". It will be interesting to see how it works out in Unreal Championchip and Battlefield 1942.
Microsoft has nothing to fear about the viability of the X-Box: in a year or so, the X-Box will become the dominant console platform.
:) But that is my current conviction.
Historically, the console with the most shovelware running on it has been the winner in the console wars for that generation. Because it's easier to grind out Britney Spears or Blue's Clues games than truly otiginal creations, there are far more publishers of shovelware than there are publishers of outstandingly unique games, and console platforms like computer platforms have a sort of "developer gravity about them": the more developers they attract now the more developers they're likely to attract in the future.
The PS2 had a head start in the shovel-wars, but the X-Box was designed from the ground up to be a shovelware console platform. What with its use of fairly stock hardware components and the industry standard Direct3D API, porting games from Windows (another big shovelware substrate) should be easy. Developers which find getting decent results on the PS2 or Gamecube difficult will flock to the X-Box.
I could be wrong on this. In a year I'd love to be proven wrong.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
You use a free ISP and got a free dsl modem. This is why MS should offer Xbox Live for free, not the over-price $50. Nevermind that it is in competition with the PS2 and nothing else; the PS2 charges $50 for the actual hardware: equivlancy.
Many ISPs offer free game servers. Except you just made that up, because I have yet to see an ISP market this fact unless we're talking about Speakeasy.net (which doesn't even give out the IPs to their servers, they're mostly clan servers). Apparently ISPs do mind doing this, because they don't do it. Let's pretend we live in a fantasy world where there are free servers by ISPs; they're not very free if you're paying your ISP. With your logic, we could say that Xbox Live's servers are free. Of course, that would be a fair comparison which you simply wouldn't use.
Localized servers. So instead of putting Xbox Live in the hands of Microsoft, you want to bet that your ISP will throw up free Xbox servers for you to play NFL on? We're talking broadband here, you can realistically get a 100ms travel time from your Xbox to MS to another Xbox. Replace realistically with almost always.
So you're saying when Xbox 2 comes out, MS will stop accepting money? You're cynical in all the wrong places. It's also likely that Xbox 2 will play Xbox games like the PS2 does with PSOne games, I see no reason why Xbox Live wouldn't do the same. Otherwise they'd lose money/customers the instant Xbox 2 came out, and Microsoft doesn't like that.
Even though the author seems to dismiss this as "ok", most ppl don't like paying $50 for an online game and getting their A$$ kicked 99% of the time.
You have a perfect idea. That has never been successfully implemented anywhere and magically it's Microsoft's fault. I don't know how long you've been playing games (maybe you're more casual than I), but there is no way you can possibly improve by playing with people who are at the same skill level as you. If there's more than one super-duper player on the server, then you either really suck (which is okay, everyone gets better with time) or for some reason that's a "hardcore" server and you should try another one. Also, some games are team games where certain skills are more focused than others.
BTW, I believe the author was joking. His wombat coordination skills wouldn't really hurt him that much in a football game.
Now sorry if this sounded like a flame, but I just think far too many people treat MS unfairly in every single instance possible. Not only is Xbox Live a far more organized online platform compared to the PS2 (which has already launched, did you notice?), it'll increase the amount of people who have broadband (even by a slim margin), and it had some exciting titles in the future (unlike the PS2, which has a pretty clear calendar for 2003).
But I will tell you that the PS2 is still the better system, and Xbox Live certainly won't get my money until Halo 2. Cheers.
There's actually a good reason why Microsoft doesn't want Xbox Live! to be compatible with PS2 and GameCube games. They can guarantee that every Xbox will be using a broadband connection. They can not say the same about PS2 users nor GameCube users. If you want a good gaming experience, you want as little lag as possible, and broadband gives you that. Ensuring that everyone has a decent connection is a step in the right direction.
And heaven forbid that they should charge money to try to recoup some of their costs! They're running dedicated servers. Do you think those come for free? You can look at this site, and you know that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Do you also realize that these dedicated Live! servers will allow people to see across games? Let's say you're playing Tony Hawk and your friend wants to play a game of NBA2k3 with you. Your friend can notify you through your Xbox because the service sits on the server. Amazing stuff.
Also, have you played on battle.net? I'll admit that they've done a superb job with the Warcraft III release, but EVERY release before then has been utterly horrid on the battle.net servers. The servers would lag for days while people would jump on or download the latest patch. The old adage of you get what you pay for is true.
btw, it's PS2, not PS/2. The PS/2 is either a) your keyboard connector or b) an old IBM machine. Sorry, that's just a pet peeve of mine.
The article really is not informative as to the whole Xbox Live! experience. So far everyone that I've heard from in the beta really enjoys it. Heck, even the guys at penny-arcade enjoy it. I am looking forward to November 15th myself.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Also, if you don't already have your house wired for electrical power, you're going to have to add that in. Not to mention that you'll need to buy a TV. Damn you, M$!!!