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Tom's Hardware Reviews Xbox Live
VividU writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Xbox Live." Also includes a bit of a summary of the state of networked gaming on the other 2 major consoles (Coleco and Intellivision). A good read if you're looking to see what's going to keep you glued to your couch in 2003.
becasue the Playstation is not going to sell a service that lets you play al your games, you have to subscribe to each individual on-line game.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
What an idiot.
Its not a Hardware upgrade, but it warns you that it is updating the bios and to not reboot during the process.
I have 2 xboxen. One at home and one at work. Both are launch xbox with NO problems playing live.
FUD
Perhaps he meant that he needed a DSL/CABLE router so he could actually use it? Those are typically around $100 ...
Cripes, that is a needlessly long rewiew... Did the man have a quota of pages to fill? Here's the summary from another person who has been with Live since Beta-
:p
If you have any sort of hardware knowledge at all (ie; are a regular reader of Slashdot), connecting Live will be cake, unless you have a real exotic network configuration, since the process is pretty well automated. A keyboard is seriously need to fill out the registration info, but doing so can still be done in under 10 minutes without one.
Live itself works well, but is still rough around the edges. The interface for some options is not the same as others from game to game. It's even non-existant in some cases. Live is in serious need of standardization in all honesty. Other than that, it's pretty smooth playing in most cases, though the occasional laggy player will dampen your gaming experience.
Live titles are kinda slim pickins right about now, the majority of them being sports related. Ghost Recon, Unreal Championship and Mech Assault are strong contenders, though each has it's own interface issue. Be that as it may, I suspect MS is working on the problem and I've heard up to 80 Live enabled games to be availible around next Christmas. Likewise, the downloadable content isn't in any sort of quantity yet, though some is there. I'd be surprised if it didn't increase as Live matures.
Verdict: If things stay the way they are now, I can't justify another year ofLive, especially after having grown up in a PC gaming environment. But I don't think they will stay the same. They've been getting plenty of feedback from the boards and it's still in it's infancy. Aside from playing select games from a limited collection, I think the biggest draw right now is reserving you Game Tag. Waiting at this point certainly won't hurt, that fact aside.
Wow... And that was less than a page too...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If that doesn't say something, I don't know what will. What say you? And no, it is not selling like hotcakes. 150,000 is a very very poor number. Compare that to the first two days of Zelda in Japan, the second largest console market just behind USA, which sold 450,000.. Yes, in TWO DAYS. That is "hotcakes" for Japan. For the USA, nearly double that and you might be getting somewhere.
I believe the reason why MS wouldn't want non-xbox users playing with xbox users is because they want to keep cheating out of xbox live. By allowing an untrusted client, such as a PC, to play, they would risk ruining the "experience" of an XBox live user, who is paying for a cheat-free online service. That is also their (stated) reason for not allowing modded XBoxes onto their network. If people want to play online vs non-xbox users, or with modded xboxes, they could use something like Gamespy Arcade, I believe.
I'm not saying that there is NO way to cheat on XBox live, nor am I saying there will NEVER be a way to cheat on XBox live, but I don't think that cheating a problem at the moment, and they are trying to keep it that way.
Basically, XBconnect is a piece of software that will run on a Windows PC on your local network. Put the Xbox on the local network, and the Xbox will see the XBconnect client as another Xbox. Thus you can use the "System Link" feature that is built into many games, used for playing multiplayer games with 2 or more Xboxen (I believe up to 16)
The great thing is that the XBconnect client interfaces through the Internet to find other players, but makes it appear to your Xbox that they are on your local network.
It is a way to play multiplayer games on the Xbox for free!
I've used it for Halo, and Unreal Championship, and had good results. The lag is usually minimal, and although sometimes not perfect, I'm sure the true Xbox Live suffers the same fate.
It's worth a look, especially if you already own a Windows PC, and a router. All you have to do is hook up your Xbox via ethernet.
Updating the dashboard and flashing the TSOP are two very different things.
it's in my head
(The devboxes also contain twice the amount of RAM, other than this, there are no differences)
it's in my head
Please, mod this guy down... There is no such thing as a BIOS (TSOP) upgrade for the Xbox from software. If there was, you wouldn't need a modchip, you could just flash whatever BIOS you wanted on your TSOP and play backups of games.
XBox Live updates your dashboard to a newer version when you install it. The only thing that would prevent this from working properly is if you modded your XBox and replaced your dashboard with something else.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon