My Xbox Live rant.

[Mfkzt]

Originally posted by Shin Johnpv
i still cant believe they make people pay for a P2P service

People are paying $9 a month for a P2P matchmaking service called Phantasy Star Online, so is it really surprising that people will pay $50 a year to play more than 1 game?

[Changeling]

The onlt two games i have for live are Capcon/Snk 2 and
NHL 2K3. CVS 2 gives me headaches during peak hours, but at night, its great. NHL always runs very smoothly. I don't like having to pay 50 buccks for the service, but when CVS 2 came out, I had no choice. I think its worth it. What I don't understand is why anyone would even waste the time or money playing first person shooters on live though. With =out mouse/keyboard control , its a joke. Plus Pc's run these games better and you can have more people on servers with the PC.

[Johnny Nighttrain]

Originally posted by Yoshi
How the hell did I miss this happening? So you suckers are paying for a service (and sometimes fees on top of that) for something that isn't anything more than a matching service? Nice.

i have nothing to add.

Originally posted by Yoshi
The T1+ explains the volume of nonsense you are able to dish out on a daily basis.

[sphere79]

Originally posted by conrooks
What I don't understand is why anyone would even waste the time or money playing first person shooters on live though. With =out mouse/keyboard control , its a joke.

Well, at least everyone's on a level playing field. I used to feel the same way about FPS's and controllers - until I played Halo. I was suprised to find that the game played very well with one, and I wasn't constantly wishing for a key/mouse setup. Wolfenstein should be fun, and of course Halo 2.......

As far as XBL being a rip off ( cause it's only P2P ) well they used to have their own servers for UC, even if they currently don't ( haven't played it in awhile ) we know they at least CAN do this. My favorite Live title is still Moto GP, and personally I don't care HOW the game is connecting - it IS connecting and playing 16 player games with ease, 95% of the time for me. Some of these problems people are having might be because of their internet connections/geographical location I'm thinking..........

[Wolffen]

Well, some of the issues are internet/geographical location issues, but there's gotta be some shitty network coding in some of these games. It's pretty bad when a game by a non-MS studio (THQ/MotoGP), which had it's online code jammed into an existing code base in less than 2 months, runs smoother with 16 people than MechAssault does with 6. To date, MotoGP has had the least hiccups, the best Live lobby, and the best Live interface. That pretty much blows.

As to all the "HahHAH! You're paying for P2P" people, XBL is more than P2P. Heck, I would have paid a few bucks for the Kola Cell download for Splinter Cell. Simple matter is, if MS ran everything across servers, $50 would be a monthly fee, not yearly. That said, the performance of said P2P hasn't been that great, IMO. I'm sure my ISP has something to do with many of my connectivity issues, but jeez...No lag my ass.

Like I said, when it works, it's great. XBL has a lot of potential. It remains to be seen if MS will actually take it to the next level (no pun intended. Well, maybe a little).

[Master]

I don't want to seem like a dick, but to improve the service you guys should consider sending an email to their customer service department so that know what to fix and such.

[Wolffen]

Dick. Actually, I did just that during the beta and after some of the nastier times I had in MechAssault. Nothing recent, mind you, but other than PSO, I haven't been on much of late. (And I haven't been on much in PSO either. Damned work!)

[Prince Planet]

Live has its issues, no doubt. Still, I think I'll keep my subscription for a bit...

[Chojin]

Originally posted by Shin Johnpv
i still cant believe they make people pay for a P2P service

[StriderKyo]

Originally posted by Delta
with all the problems with xbox live, i am not going to be surprised at all at the drop in subscriptions after the initial subscriptions run out. when is that going to be? november? of course, ms won't release this info, but it'll be bad. real bad.

Given that I've never heard anyone say they regret getting it, I doubt it. Given that Halo 2 will be out right after that, I really doubt it.

Say what you want about "having" to host games, it's still the only place with a legit online fighter, PSO with voice chat (or anything with voice chat, for that matter), and it'll be the only place with online Halo.

They'll be just fine.