How does XBL work?


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It works in many ways, can you explain what you want answering by "HOW" it works, technology, linking people?

Erm, well it can differ on price, depends if you buy prepaid 12 Month/3 Month or via credit card

Xbox Live is a lot more advanced then PSN and is well established. Has a lot more (nice) features then PSN.

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XBL is centralised while PSN isn't. So everything is more or less incorporated into everything else. Like games and ranking systems, servers and so on?

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I won't explain how it works (cuz i can't) but it's 50/year if you go on that plan which is the cheapest. It has a dashboard where you can see leaderboards, friends list, send messages, voice chat, video chat, download demos, download arcade games, download updates, download premium content such as game extras, tv shows, movies and other clips. Also has free video downloads like game trailers, etc. Just go to xbox.com and they will probably list the features in a better way. Oh yeah and everything is really integrated very well. It's very smooth and whatnot. That's all I can say really.

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The standard price is $50/year, although you can get shorter subscriptions or bundles with the webcam, microphone, etc.

An example of the difference is that on Xbox Live - you have a centralized friends list that shows you what games your other friends are playing. If I were on your friends list, you could see that I'm playing Gears of War and that I'm on the 3rd Act. You could even check my achievements and see which ones I've got in that game (or any others). You could then send me an invite to play COD3 or something else. All of this functionality (game invites, friends list, achievements, voice chat and text messaging, video chat, matchmaking, etc) is provided by the Xbox Live service.

Offering a service like that costs Microsoft a lot of money, so it can't be operated for free like the PSN which actually provides very little functionality (everything is left up to the publishers and developers). Most of Xbox Live is actually offered for free with the Silver subscription. However, you need a Gold account in order to play games online with other subscribers.

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It's a series of tubes :ninja:

Gears of war Geek :p

The cost is $59.99 (+ tax) CAD for 13 months....You are able to play with friends in multiplayer and for some games, campaign.

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crap! grrr..... that was a good plug Michael ... :)

Oh and it seems you two aren't on the Neowin leaderboards ....

http://www.mygamercard.net/clboard.php?id=Xw3Rgp0f

Join up or PM PabUK here on neowin to get your names added. Here's the thread!

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=501135

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How does XBL work? How much does it cost per year? Why is it better than the PSN?

Thanks! :)

XBL is quite easy to understand...

you give us some money and we'll make you happy for the next 12 months, add in some of your friends into the formula and you're set for one of the best gaming experiences you'll ever have... :happy: :yes:

once you try XBL there's no way back... :drool:

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it is very addictive. the only drawback can be download speeds for content such as movies. however, there's very little lag in most games, except DOA4 for some strange reason.

i love XBL, it's worth the investment and i think MS deserve to be paid for the service. i'd rather have a centralized online component, makes it harder for the assorted goofballs out there to cheat and such.

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I have a technical question about Live...which might not be able to get answered here.

Anyway, here's the deal. On EA Sports games (specifically NCAA07), players' stats and rankings are screwed up to the point where alot of people don't even get their results recorded after "ranked" games. I've had this dilemma since I got the game, my ranking is always the default 10001. Now, I understand that XBL is centralized...so where does the blame lie? Is it with EA or Microsoft? Does Microsoft allow companies to host their own servers or is XBL just a 'connection' to hosted servers from specific game publishers?

Another thing I do not understand about Live, and it's made my experience so-so, is the quitting factor. I can understand the random and rare dropped connection but something has to be done about players who ditch games because they are losing. I'm at the point with NCAA07 where I can tell if a player left or not due to losing - it's all based on their play during the game. NBA2K7 has a feature where if a player quits in the game, the game is reviewed and a win will be awarded. This does NOT happen with NCAA07 or Madden07, however. In my opinion, Microsoft needs to come up with some requirements for Live-enabled games as far as what happens to players when they disconnect. Something I feel should be incorporated is a DNF rate or % that is in the gamer's profile. That way, before starting a game we know what issues we might be facing. Also, I think either the "ranked" designation either needs to be fixed or just abolish it. I don't play for stats or rankings or leaderboard BS, I play to have fun. The problem is the people who do ruin it for others.

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XBL is quite easy to understand...

you give us some money and we'll make you happy for the next 12 months, add in some of your friends into the formula and you're set for one of the best gaming experiences you'll ever have... :happy: :yes:

once you try XBL there's no way back... :drool:

Tell me about it, I went for the 1-month trial when I bought my console in November and I was like I probably won't use this and such. As soon as my trial ended I felt very disconnected, I mean one of the reasons to own an Xbox 360 is to have the full online functionality.

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I have a technical question about Live...which might not be able to get answered here.

Anyway, here's the deal. On EA Sports games (specifically NCAA07), players' stats and rankings are screwed up to the point where alot of people don't even get their results recorded after "ranked" games. I've had this dilemma since I got the game, my ranking is always the default 10001. Now, I understand that XBL is centralized...so where does the blame lie? Is it with EA or Microsoft? Does Microsoft allow companies to host their own servers or is XBL just a 'connection' to hosted servers from specific game publishers?

Another thing I do not understand about Live, and it's made my experience so-so, is the quitting factor. I can understand the random and rare dropped connection but something has to be done about players who ditch games because they are losing. I'm at the point with NCAA07 where I can tell if a player left or not due to losing - it's all based on their play during the game. NBA2K7 has a feature where if a player quits in the game, the game is reviewed and a win will be awarded. This does NOT happen with NCAA07 or Madden07, however. In my opinion, Microsoft needs to come up with some requirements for Live-enabled games as far as what happens to players when they disconnect. Something I feel should be incorporated is a DNF rate or % that is in the gamer's profile. That way, before starting a game we know what issues we might be facing. Also, I think either the "ranked" designation either needs to be fixed or just abolish it. I don't play for stats or rankings or leaderboard BS, I play to have fun. The problem is the people who do ruin it for others.

EA has a special agreement with Microsoft: when you connect to an EA XBL-enabled game, you connect to EA's servers, not Microsoft's.

I have similar problems with Burnout Revenge, another EA game: sometimes my ranking is lost, sometimes the server forget my progression for no good reasons.

As far as sore losers or quitters or some explitive the swear word filter would be totally mad at me, there are everywhere. The idea of the reputation ranking was set as a user-based stuff.

It's difficult to set the reputation of players depending on the connection lost: how can you tell the difference between a game locked up, a connection lost, a power failure or a reset button.

A lot of good and friendly gamers with bad connections would be disadvantaged for their reputation if their connection blows up.

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On topic: XBL has been excellent since I got in playing halo 2. Ever since, the service has been great, hasnt disappointed me much. About PSN, not sure, I havent tried it yet tho.

**EA blows when it comes to agreeing to connect to their servers, not console's server.

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EA has a special agreement with Microsoft: when you connect to an EA XBL-enabled game, you connect to EA's servers, not Microsoft's.

I have similar problems with Burnout Revenge, another EA game: sometimes my ranking is lost, sometimes the server forget my progression for no good reasons.

As far as sore losers or quitters or some explitive the swear word filter would be totally mad at me, there are everywhere. The idea of the reputation ranking was set as a user-based stuff.

It's difficult to set the reputation of players depending on the connection lost: how can you tell the difference between a game locked up, a connection lost, a power failure or a reset button.

A lot of good and friendly gamers with bad connections would be disadvantaged for their reputation if their connection blows up.

EA's servers are considered to be terrible in comparison to those for everything else. They often go down with some games having few or no people playing them.

On the subject of quitters, MS takes the view that games are supposed to be a fun experience - but it's not a jail term. You should have the choice to leave when you want. How the game handles things is up to the developer - whether it classes it as a draw, loss, win or decides to declare the game invalid.

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How does XBL work? How much does it cost per year? Why is it better than the PSN?

Thanks! :)

1. The Internet.

2. $20/3 months last time I upgraded my silver to gold to play Gears online.

3. I'm not familiar with PSN so I cannot say for sure why it is better.

I do like:

+ Friends list is easy to use.

+ Easy to see people you just played a game with and can choose to ignore them if they are ###### or prefer them.

+ Easy to send voice mail to people.

+ Easy to invite a person to a game you are playing.

+ I also like the "compare games" feature. You can see what other people are playing and w/ the gamescore stuff you can see what they play the most. Privacy advocates don't like it but I do.

What I don't like:

- Games are setup to be hosted on a person's xbox 360... There are no "dedicated" servers with high speed backbone connections like in PC gaming so performance (lag) can be really bad at times.

- There are a lot of users that don't know how to properly setup their internet router so that voice chat works. Along those lines, people with really irritating voices or joining a game with a child sucks.

-shad

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What I don't like:

- Games are setup to be hosted on a person's xbox 360... There are no "dedicated" servers with high speed backbone connections like in PC gaming so performance (lag) can be really bad at times.

I'm pretty sure that when you host a game it isn't hosted on your actual Xbox. You're basically just setting up the game rules and that's it...

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true, in call of duty 3 for example you only connect to 5 players, than each of them connects to 5 players, the bandwidth gets equally shared among all of you with no single host. the problem is that if you fail to connect to one person you cant join the server.

cod3 is the only game thats ever given me connection issues but to be honest compared to online PC gaming its nothing to cry about. In general there is no comparison for xbox live. I had COD3 freeze on me when i was in game with a friend from school who lives 8 hours away. I restarted my xbox, *while cod3 loaded* I created a chat channel on xbl, invited him, explained that it frooze, than when i tried to rejoin that server i got connection errors so he said just join some other game and he'd join me. I did that, on his screen he gets an option to join my current session which will actually load the game if its not loaded (it will even prompt for hte disc if necessary) and skip all the b.s. stuff and put you right into that users game/server.

this is the stuff that you dont think twice about but eventually realize is unbelievably useful and makes all the difference.

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