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Xbox Live Goes Online
abhikhurana writes "
Internetnews is reporting that Microsoft has launched Xbox Live
broadband gaming service. To access Microsoft's service, Xbox gamers
have to buy a $49.99 starter kit, which includes 12 month's worth of
access to the Xbox Live service and a headset kit for voice
communications. Microsoft said that about 16 games with online play
capabilities will be available by the end of the year.
So has anyone already tried it? If so, what do you think about it?"
.. here in Sweden, Microsoft is more or less giving these machines away at about 2000SEK (about 180-190 USD) with two games, DVD remote control and a DVD movie. As I understand it, they aren't making any money of the actual Xbox unit but instead they are selling the games quite expensive.
I bought one and am a happy user so far. I would prefer a PS2 but they where too expensive.
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
Unreal Championship
NFL 2K3
NBA 2K3
NFL Fever 2003
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Whacked!
To be quite honest, nothing earth shattering here. I guess I was hoping for something that would set their service on fire; but, like the rest of the games in their library, there isn't any one game that is fantastic except maybe MechAssault which Gamespot rated a 9.0. Personally, I was really hoping for a coop-able network Halo.
As an aside, it is important to note that companies aren't required to go with Xbox Live as Electronic Arts chose to support their own servers and ditch Microsoft.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
If you have a modchip you are banned permanently and it seems so called "legitimate" users are being banned as well in the midst of microsoft's "anti-cheating" efforts.
A quick search on Google turned up this article with the regional director of X-Box Australia. He seems to address exactly what you're asking about.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
They better get to it, since they seem to be lacking a strong title to sell the service.
I picked up my XBox live kit Thursday, and although I haven't been playing it constantly since then, I really enjoyed the experience. The only live capable game I have at the moment is Mech Assault, which is a great game, but I was hoping for a couple more play modes, including Co-Op.
I think the idea behind the service is a great one. MS specifically defined the network performance to which the games must conform to make sure that lag was minimized (haven't had a single bit of lag yet) and that the voice worked without interfering with the game. The voice feature itself works as you'd expect. Voices are very clear, and the sounds of the other players only comes through on your headset, so the sounds for the game itself are not affected.
One feature I did find interesting was the ability to have more than one user on the local XBox, and still use the Live. Using this, a friend can play with you (split-screen or what have you) against the other Live players.
All in all, I thought the service was extremely well done. I hope this helps Microsoft come a little closer to breaking even with XBox. Not that they need money, but I enjoy my XBox, and I don't want to see it disappear.
GR will do nice , as most players will have played cs....Whacked, I have no idea about actually.
Whacked! is supposed to be a multiplayer gameshow that allows the online player to pick a persona (including a woman who runs around naked-but-censored the entire show) and then compete in various contests. If you are at all into Nintendo games, think Mario Party, but for adults. It scored poorly, though, with only a 5.6 from Gamespot (who, I believe, is a truly impartial reviewer).
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
It depends on how your isp is set up. I work at a university help desk, and we have had several people calling us trying to get their xboxs online. It does not work at my school becouse you have to regester any device on the network to be able to get off campus by going to a web page with that device and giving it some info. With xbox live, or the beta at least, you can only go to the MS site to regester for xbox live. So if you can browse the internet normally with your xbox you can use any isp it would seem, but if you have to use it to regester itself, you are SOL. The only other problem I could see is ISPs blocking the ports it uses. But otherwise all it needs is an internet connection it can use.
"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain
I got an XBox back in December as a gift. I was very happy with games like Halo and Max Payne but little else for XBox was very good. Friday however, I bought XBox live with Ghost Recon and Mech Assault. I am happy now that I didn't sell my XBox like I was tempted to last summer. Ghost Recon was an outstanding game to begin with on PC but now that I have a video card that can do it justice it look INCREDIBLE. I liked the logical layout of controls too. Mech Assault was more of the same. The controls are over simplified compaired to PC Mech games but that doesn't detract from the game. In fact I found that it made it even better. Mech Assault is by far the best of all the XBox Live games. The only negative things I can say about XBox Live is the setup. I find it stupid that they only support a few different gateway routers. Mine is not supported. I was lucky that the XBox website had a good workaround for my particular router (Netgear RT314). It's also stupid that XBox live doesn't support Visa or MasterCard DEBIT cards. I mean, WTF, it's a goddamn credit/debit card and you can't support it. That was very short sighted. Lastly, I didn't see a function to boot players from a game. That is needed IMO because in Ghost Recon, when beginning an XBox Live mission, everyone has to show themselves as READY before the game can begin. One person not showing as ready will keep the game from starting. So if he's AFK or just being a dick, we are all SOL. They need to fix that.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Amazing how many people posted and god modded up without even replying to the post at all, but just M$ bashing.
Well, after playing MechAssault for about 10 hours, I can say it ROCKS. I've been a gamer a LONG time (1984 or so), and I've played online since qtest, but I have to say MechAssault is over the top fun. The graphics toast my GeForce 4 Ti 4200, the talking to the other players feature is amazing (finally some REAL socializing in a game), and I have yet to see any lag whatsoever.
The only minor problem is joining games, it takes a few tries to get in (if your doing it manually), but that's fine as it's assuring you actually have the right connection speeds to the server in question.
There's also the great feature where you scores are permanately on the scoreboard (kills/deaths in each gametype) so you can compare with friends.
Two thumbs up for the Xbox Live! team!!!
I've been playing online with the xbox for a while now.
My only complaint are games have not been optimized for online play... This will change with the advant of Xbox live, I just hope someone gets a reverse engineered public service going soon. I wouldn't doubt MS has added some provisions to delay this kind of activity.
In any event, its just been neat to play with, but I've seen nothing stellar on Xbox that really would keep me coming back to the system. (Note, I do not own one, simply play around with a friends).
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
My friend got a chance to play on it, and he said it's pretty nice. He's about the most hard core gamer I know, so I'll take his word for it.
All circuits busy.
They offer the 12 month deal at the local store for $80 Canadian Pesos, but what they don't tell you, is that even though you've paid for a whole year, you still need to give a credit card number before you can use it. How many 14 year-olds have a credit card? How many parents trust giving their credit card to their children? Heck, how many people are still paranoid about giving their credit card over the net? I can understand after 12 months asking for a card, but why do they need to do it up front when the person has already payed for the service?
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
It's a bug. Some devices are getting a bad response from the Kerberos authentication server. I also thought at the beginning it was a ban (I have a mod'd XBox), but it doesn't appear to be. A lot of people with "legit" boxes are getting the same response while some people with modified XBoxes are working fine.
Note, they do seem to be bloking mod chips, not BANNING them. If you go on with a mod chip you can't connect to Live. If you disable it you can get on fine. This is a seperate issue than the connectivity issue many beta users are now having, including me.
Xbox live has the functionality to spoof a MAC address. In the network config section you can supply the MAC address that the Xbox should use. Seems like it should be fairly easy to get on the net that way.
what the hell do you think it does.... i have a linux router sharing my dsl line, and it connects to xbox live through it. no modems, the xbox doesnt have one, just a single ethernet jack which i plug into my hib, tell the xbox its ip on my local lan and the gateway/dns servers, since im too lazy to setup DHCP and off it goes. makes me wonder what the hell you thought xbox live was....
Mini-review:
THE SERVICE:
Signup: The first time you put a live DVD in your system, it installs some new OS-level software to allow you to connect to the service. Then comes the tedious process of entering name, address, credit card #, and other vitals through an onscreen keyboard. Surfing around the buttons grows tedious quickly, and this process can take as long as 10 minutes. While others have reported issues with gateway routers and debit cards, I had no problem connecting through my Watchguard SOHO/tc NAT box, or using my visa check card.
Downloadable Content: All the online games I've played so far have been able to check for downloadable content. Microsoft has the option of charging for the download, which could lead to some serious imbalances in play (either pay $10 for the super ultra rocket launcher, or get your ass handed to you in deathmatch from now on) later. According to the buzz on the street, the first year or so of downloadable content should be free, but after that Microsoft plans to start introducing fees for certain downloads.
Mod-chip lockout: Users of modchips are indeed locked out of using the live service, and for that, I'm very grateful, although this sentiment will probably get me modded down. Mod chips let people run tweaked, unsigned code. This opens the door for cheaters. If anyone remembers dreamcast PSO, you'll know how bad cheaters can ruin a game. The closed system MS has precludes any cheating except for exploits that may already be in the game, and I'm just fine with that.
Hardware: The package ships with a CD of game demos and a headset. The headset is obviously designed without those who wear glasses in mind, and is a behind-the-head band on which a microphone mono speaker can be hung for either ear. This plugs into a module that plugs in turn into the top memory card slot on the controller. The module has a volume slider and a mute button. Fortunately, the jack on the headset is compatible with standard cell-phone handsfree kits, and I was able to plug one in as a replacement for the headset without any trouble. Voices are crisp and clear, and others seem to hear the smack I talk just fine.
Games: The pack-in demos are Whacked and MotoGP. I'm confused by Microsoft's blind insistence on ignoring their killer app. Halo for this release. Are they worried about being flooded by their own success?
Whatever the reason, the demos are a mixed bag. MotoGP is unquestionably the best motorcycle racing game ever made, with seperate analog controls for acceleration, steering, and seperate analog front & rear brake controls. It's visually stunning and the game runs 16-player races without lag, letting you verbally communicate with the 3 players closest to your position.
It's also motorcycle racing, which is as interesting to me as watching paint dry. YMMV. Those who enjoy the game and also own the full version can unlock all the tracks and custom riders for online play.
Whacked is garbage. Silly "sick and twisted" cartoon characters with big cheap weapons collect stars and smash each other. You can talk smack with the whole arena, but it doesn't hold my interest in the slightest.
Better are the release games for the service. Unreal Championship is a faithful and beautiful reproduction of much of UT2k3's features, tweaked out for the system. Multiple voice channels for each team (there are also neutral channels for fraternizing with the enemy) let you form squads while you're playing, and bombing run, ctf, double-dom, deathmatch, and team dm are all present and accounted for. The resolution is low but the anti-aliasing is high, and the game runs at a constant speed. An interesting note is the ability to run your xbox with UC as a dedicated server should you so desire.
MechAssault is a fun, but unbalanced, deathmatch game. Giant stompy robots blowing each other up is what you get, exactly as promised. The battletech faithful will be put off by the lack of location-specific damage (no more blowing off legs and quick headshot victories), but the resulting action game is fun and the battles can get hectic, with exploding players chain-reacting others into a giant fireball o' doom.
Community: The community features are, overall, wonderful. Buddylisting a player is as easy as hitting pause and selecting his name from a menu. It's possible to send a game request to a player who's not even playing the same title you are. A popup appears on the screen, and if the player accepts, then all he has to do is put in the appropriate game disc, and he'll be joined to your game automatically.
Also interesting are the systemwide rankings for each game. Stats are tracked for all players on all games, and you can see your rank against the systemwide leaderboard from the main menu of most games any time you'd like.
MotoGP is the best at community, with pre- and post-game lobbies, and a dropdown on the HUD that appears to tell you who's currently talking. MechAssault, on the other hand, really drops the ball, with no post-game lobby, making starting a new game with the same players as the last difficult, if not impossible. Instead, players are dumped back to the main multiplayer menu, and have to rejoin a new server. Hopefully all future releases will follow MotoGP's lead, and the kinks in the launch games will be patched over by downloads.
Misc: It's interesting to note MS is already patching titles. There was a bug in Sega's NFL2k3 that allowed someone who was losing the game to pause it indefinitely, and then wait out their would-be victor, since quitting is counted on the ranking boards as a loss. The game has since been patched to include a 90-second pause timeout, at which point the pausing player is automatically dumped from the game and takes the loss on HIS record.
Overall: Not without its flaws, but the overall concepts and workflow are marvelous, and the game play is fast and lag-free. I'm very happy with the service, and will gladly pay $50 a year for it when it comes time to pay up again. I'm a little wary of for-pay downloadable content, and the online features need to be standardized across games. There's a lot of A-list titles in the lineup, but none that break away from the pack and appear as a killer app. Halo 2 will probably sell a lot of kits, but as it stands it'll probably only appeal to the hardcore, and current X-Box owners.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
It might be worth noting at this point that Counterstrike is slated to come to Xbox Live.
Sega has stated that a keyboard adaptor will ship with Phantasy Star Online for the XBox.
Apparently the Xbox has a standard Cat 5 ethernet jack on it, and by default it simply requests a DHCP lease, though there are configuration options for other systems. At least, that's what I've been told, since I deal in high speed internet services, and have already had several customers who are getting said internet access solely for their Xbox's.. most of them don't even HAVE PC's.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/