Xbox Live isn’t free, but it is cheap. You can buy a year subscription for around $50, and that’s the gold package. The silver package is free, and includes all of the nifty communication options that the gold package does but without the online vs and co-op game modes. Not bad right, yeah I didn’t think so either, that was until Christmas last year.
Since Christmas, every 10 year old and up got a 360 with XBL and Halo 3. Shortly there after they all found out how much better COD 4 is and have since been plaguing my headset nightly with high pitched voices and “yo momma” jokes. They get muted quickly, but the volume of players has yet to be matched by Microsoft’s service. In December, when this first started to get noticeable, nearly every match would drop all players half way if not sooner. This didn’t happen to games like Perfect Dark, and older titles, but who still plays them? Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and a few other “hot games” were a complete mess.
Now this time isn’t so bad, and it’s not wide spread, but man is it a pain in the rear! Today Infinity Ward released 4 new maps for COD 4, and at 800 MS points for the bunch (about $10), they aren’t a bad deal. The bad deal is mad rush of XBL gamers all trying to download the new maps. It crippled Xbox Live’s Market Place almost completely, leaving movies and TV shows the only content unhampered by the rush.
Another nice little touch was the in-game mandatory update. That too was backed up and took me 45 minutes to clear. Really ticks me off that Microsoft seems to do nothing about the issue of overloading, and goes with the “ride it out” solution.
I wonder what would happen if the XBL community got together and boycotted XBL for a day, or weekend. The ads you see in the menus are paid for, and I would think they would take notice to a lack of activity.
