Xbox Live
From Xboxic
Xbox Live has always been one of the Xbox's cornerstones. The most comprehensive and easy to use online gaming system to date. And, no suprises here, Microsoft continues their online-success on the Xbox 360 with alot of improvements. Live is now fully integrated in everything you do, wether it's playing a game or watching a movie. For instance; when you're playing a game of Perfect Dark Zero and your friend, who's playing Project Gotham Racing 3, decides to voicechat with you, you'll receive a notice and can start voice chatting instantly without even pausing the game.Silver and Gold
Xbox Live comes in 2 flavours; Silver (free) and Gold (paid, ~5$ per month). Everyone with an Xbox 360 can sign-up for Silver without paying a dime, but lacks some features compared to gold. The biggest difference is that you can't play your games online with silver. Without gaming there's still plenty to do on Xbox Live. A big plus compared to the previous Live system is that you don't need a creditcard anymore, if you don't own one or don't wish to use one you can buy pre-paid cards for Gold at your local retailer. Gold Cards come in 1 month, 3 months and 1 year.
Silver Service Features:
- Intermittent free weekend multiplayer gameplay for Xbox Live Silver members
- Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply)
- Avatar (called 'Gamer Tile') for your gamer profile (1)
- Motto for your gamer profile (1)
- Option to change gamer profile name
- Personalized look for the Xbox system guide (1)
- Offline achievements (1)
- Online achievements
- Access to other players' gamer cards via Live
- Cumulative gamer score (1)
- Location/language profile (1)
- Reputation
- Recent players list
- Free and premium download game content
- Free and premium downloadable movies, music, TV
- Downloadable demos/trailers
- Microtransactions
- Custom playlist in every game (1)
- Communicate with voice, video (in Japan), or text
Gold Service Features
- Seamless transition of Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360 (Requires you use a .net passport to transfer)
- Multiplayer online gameplay
- Enhanced matchmaking using cumulative gamer score, reputation, location/language profile and skill level.
- Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
- Voice chat
- Video conferencing (future option when webcam comes available)
((1): also available offline)
Optimizing Performance
To get the best performance from Xbox Live it is best to ensure your console can not only connect to the internet, but that other computers and consoles on the internet can also connect to your console. If your console is behind a firewall or a router using NAT, make sure the following ports are publicly accessible and forwarded to the console:
Note that this is not only improves actual online gaming performance but also greatly accelerates downloading on Xbox Live Marketplace.
On some routers, notably the popular Linksys WRT54G, you must also disable UPnP.
