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Xbox Live Goes Online

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-what-are-the-games dept.

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?"

4 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. Good Idea by acehole · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As with all good ideas involving technology they hardly reach outside of the US, Japan or europe.

    In Australia the X-Box is doing okay, still lagging behind the PS2 though. Such a service may never reach our shores, it's a shame because there would be a market here for it.

    I guess it would depend if the market was big enough for Microsoft.

    --
    Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
  2. It is great! by gdeciantis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have been playing since the beta and I have found that the service is really good and fun. Moto Gp is a fun game on Live, but MechAssault is a whole different world of fun. XBL runs pretty nicely because of all the broadband users. A much better experience that some online gaming on the PC.

  3. Broadband gaming vs. dialup gaming by roachmotel3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Frankly, I'm somewhat glad that MS has forced broadband in this product. There's nothing worse than paying the $40 a month for broadband, mostly for gaming, just to get on some awesome CS server where within minutes a bunch of losers with dialup come on and ruin the game for everyone.

    By at least setting the bar to broadband they have excluded some gamers, but they will have improved performance for everyone left.

  4. Re:could this be the xbox "killer app"? by Gary+Franczyk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You could say the same thing about Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For some time, it was known as having less than stellar performance, and for being a copy-cat of Netscape Navigator, with a very similar UI and features.

    Since then, it has improved somewhat with its stability and performance, but since Netscape has gone to the wayside, almost no features have been introduced. In fact, most of the changes between version 3 and version 6 have been internal, such as additional automation calls and additional events for programmers to use.