It's Time to Learn About Xbox Live
On or shortly after Christmas Day, many of your customers will be plugging into this service.
On the ISP-Wireless list in December, MS asked:
"I've had calls from a number of Xbox 360 customers that are having trouble with game play etc. Very long lags, poor pings etc. These calls are coming from customers off of multiple towers and even in different towns. No calls coming from Wii or PlayStation. Just Xbox 360. Anyone else seeing these issues in the last few months?"
RB noted that Microsoft's service differs from that offered by Nintendo and Sony:
"Xbox Live works differently than the PlayStation 3 online. The game "server" on Xbox live is hosted by Microsoft. With PlayStaion 3 games, the developer is responsible for the online portion of the game. In most cases, the developer acts like a match maker and the actual game is hosted by one of the players. I don't know how the Wii is done. I don't think I have any Wii games that are online multiplayer."
Doing some research myself, I found that many problems with Xbox appear to be caused by the fact that games are hosted by users, not by Microsoft. On BroadbandReports, one user wrote in November:
"This Christmas, my family will start to use an Xbox 360, and I assumed it would be a bit like the Sony PS3 network. Generally for PS3 games, you can select Sony hosts, 3rd party hosts, or any host. I'm surprised to read that most if not all Xbox 360 games are hosted by users. I've been happiest with Sony hosted games on my PS3."
So game quality depends on the connection of the user who is hosting the game—if your customer joins a game hosted by someone with a slow or distant connection, they will have a poor experience.
Furthermore, at this time last year, the Xbox Live service had an extended outage that lasted eleven days from December 22, 2007 through January 1, 2008. So if there's a problem, check the news to see whether or not the Xbox Live service itself is down.
Of course, Microsoft has been preparing for the bandwidth deluge, updating the Xbox Live UI in October.
On the other hand, a recent partnership with NetFlix to deliver movies to the Xbox is guaranteed to increase bandwidth consumption.
Reviews of the movie service are not positive at this time. One review concluded:
It seems that when Xbox Live and Netflix team up to decide the level of HD video you’re allowed to see, you never know what you’re going to get. On average, I estimate that the quality of HD video via Netflix looks better than a standard-def TV broadcast stretched across an HDTV (at least all the Netflix HD content is at the proper aspect ratio and resolution), and worse than a decently uncompressed HD broadcast from a major network. It looks a bit like an old DVD. Which, I suppose, is what I typically get from Netflix in the mail.
Another review said that Microsoft should get plaudits for even trying to stream in HD:
With Ratatouille in standard definition (and 4 out of 4 bars connection speed) the picture was rock solid, the motion was without judder or blur. The 2 bar connection speed on an HD movie showed many more visual artifacts and motion blur. With 3 bars, the motion blur and macroblocking was much reduced (to the point that only I noticed it and not any of my family or friends. Still, the fact that Xbox Live can stream HD in any form is impressive.
So don't expect angry customers blaming you for a service that doesn't work at all. Instead, get to know what Xbox Live does, both the amazing and the bad, and expect some customers wanting higher speeds or lower latency.
Will they pay for it?
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