I have a few questions about the Xbox 360 (I got the Premium/Pro/whatever for Christmas)


1. My friend (who has a Halo Xbox 360) told me that if I watch DVDs too much using the 360 that it can mess up the disc reader. Is that true?

2. Is Xbox Live worth $50?

No... (hes an idiot)
and No...

For #2, it really depends on how much time you think you'll play it.

In my case, I buy temporary one- or three-month subscription cards when I come back home on break from school.

Conservatively imagining your leisure time is worth $10 an hour to you (think about how much you'd drop on a two-hour movie, or how much money you could make working during that hour), if you plan on spending 5 or more hours a month playing XBox Live! than it might be worth it. A lot of games have so much more playability once you get Live.

Do you like playing multiplayer games? If so, of course it's worth it. It seems like an odd question to ask.

I hardly ever play single player, and probably spend at least 10 hours on Live per week, so $50 for every 13 months seems like a no-brainer.

I only say no because it should be free. The consoles aren't cheap, the games aren't cheap... PLAYING should be free.

#1. Uh, no.
#2. Absolutely yes. Aside from the strange problems the past few days, XBL has been amazing and solid. It just feels /right/. It's how gaming on a console should be.

*shrug*
Free would be nice, but $50 every 13 months isn't too hard to swallow. I definitely get far more than my money's worth.

12+1 cards can be had for 30-40$. Even if you pay 40 for them, that's only 3 bucks a month.

Ok... lets see. Let's say about 75%(thats probably very generous) of Xbox360 owners use Live. So thats roughly 10,050,000 consoles using Live WORLDWIDE... So $30,000,000 every MONTH into Microshafts pockets and we are saying 'its not a bad deal'.

Sorry I just think if they are making billions on the console itself, let alone games, we should play for free.

edit: oh yeah, source for total X360 sales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360

They aren't making billions on the console, though. I remember hearing that this year was the first year they haven't lost money on XBox. And 30 mil may seem like a lot, but they have to pay for tons of bandwidth and teams of employees to maintain, develop, and create new content.

Except don't all the MP games use peer-to-peer, so MS doesn't have any bandwidth costs except for downloading game demos and the initial game setup (like the old ZONE), right?

This is what I thought. I thought the days of 'game servers' died with broadband. There isn't much need for a server when everyone is running on DSL and up. Unless you are running something more than 20 or so players... can XBOX 360 even do that?

Well, they do have all of the infrastructure in place for matchmaking.

Game demos, game downloads, movie/tv downloads, game updates, matchmaking, friends/message system (including voice/video), and more.

Frankly, I'd consider the thing to be a logistical NIGHTMARE. They've got to be using thousands of terabytes of bandwidth a month, on top of massive database queries and such.

Assuming they had an uncapped 100mbit port on a server running max, that'd still only transfer 27TB of data month maximum, so they've got to have at least a hundred fileservers alone, not to mention everything they need for the backend/accounting/backups.

Man, I think everybody's making too much money. I want everything for free!

They need recurring revenue. Live is a service where customers pay directly to Microsoft, instead of through game makers. Assuming XBox 360s are decently built, once enough of the market buys a 360, sales will start to decline. Live allows Microsoft to keep getting a return on their investment, which they need to convince themselves and shareholders that making consoles and providing services like Live! are worth all the trouble.

Speaking of xbox live, I made a "gold" trial account, and now my son wants to play. Do I have to let him use mine? Or if he wants to use his own account, we have to pay separately for him?

To play online there has to be at least one gold member. The rest of the players can join in with him (just make a silver account). At least, this is how it works for most games.

Sorry but communism doesn't work, let alone with an online service. XBox Live has been lauded as the way online gaming should be done since it arrived. It is an excellent service at an excellent value. Microsoft is also an excellent company. If you don't like it feel free to use a linux PC and linux PS3. I love capitalism and personally want Microsoft to continue to thrive.

Christ, live is worth it. Who cares where the money goes--they're a company, they're out there to make money not be charitable. Do I wish it was free? Yes. Am I gonna complain if/when I get a 360 and I have to drop 50 bucks to play for a year? No. Why? BECAUSE I'M NOT A CHEAP *******.

Some people need to lighten up and get off the "LOL M$" train. They're not that ****ing bad.

Also--no offense wookie, but Sony is about the worst example for communism there is, other than microsoft of course.

Whatever dude, I connected it up to the internet a few days ago, and my gold trial is clicking away, and the damn thing doesn't work.

Yeah, Live's been wonky the past 2 weeks. Sucks really, and pretty unheard of...nobody knows why.

Wish I could've jumped in and told you now's not the best time but c'est la vie, no?

Either way, the trial's only worth about 5 bucks when you think about it so...consider yourself to have wasted a 5 dollar gift certificate to somewhere. It COULD be worse.

$50 a year is pretty reasonable for online play for all your games. It's not like an MMO where it's just one. Even if the actual games are P2P, there's still a considerable backend that needs to be payed for. And on top of that, Microsoft is a company looking to make profit.

I actually don't mind paying, even when I don't see the value (we've been playing pc games online for free for over a decade now), my real problem is all the personal information they're after. I don't get why they need it. The real answer is that they don't need it, they just want it. Esp. when you can buy these points at bestbuy or something and just type in the code, and they have the unique id of my xbox I'm sure, there's no reason for all that stuff. Esp. considering many of these are installed/used by kids, it should be illegal to ask/require information from people < 18 years old. Sometimes the kids get gift certificates for toysrus and the people working there ask for their phone numbers... seriously should be illegal.

Yeah, kinda true, but information wins in this market. The better you know your audience, the better you're able to target them with ads, or target new audiences.

If you don't like it just go drop 50 bucks on a gamecard at walmart and be done with it though.

First, with regards to your complaints about service lately I have had XBox live for years and have never experienced consistent problems until the past few days. I thought that maybe an excessive number of people with free time on their hands and maybe a lot of people with new consoles and accounts from Christmas might have caused a problem. I'm sure it will be ironed out soon.

About privacy, I don't see the issue. It is a service you are signing up for just like other utitlity type services. You provide a credit card number and contact information. The most sensitive information you give is the cc number. Why complain about email and phone if you are fine with a credit card?

50$ a year is more than reasonable, and I'm pretty confused why you think it's some kind of a ripoff. In-fact, I have a hard time believing they make a lot of money off of 50 bucks a year.

I think buying a 360 is a waste of money without live, considering 60% of next gen gameplay is online.

It's just a name and address, not a friggen SSN. And they ask for the age since they do age filtering on the service. Plus, considering the fact that you can tie a credit card to the account to purchase points, it's important that they have that information for security reasons.

Except it's not. They don't need any personally identifiable information in order to provide the service. I'm not giving them my cc number, if I do decide to do the gold thing, I'll buy the card at best buy. Even if I was giving them a credit card number, I'd rather give them that than my phone number because: a) visa limits my liability if my credit card number is stolen or used fraudulently, b) giving out my phone number doesn't open me up to telemarketing calls, c) microsoft has a terrible record when it comes to keeping personal information personal -- aside from the intential sharing of data (which I still do have a problem with), they have a terrible record when it comes to the security of their customers private information.

Then ask for month and year, they don't need a full birthdate for that. Except you don't have to tie a credit card number. If they only prompted for this information for credit card purchases, I would have no problem, but they require it to sign up for a FREE silver account as well (at least it did for me). I shouldn't have to justify why I don't want to give my information to them, they should have to justify why they need it (they don't -- as I said above, they don't need it, they want it). This isn't about tinfoil hats or hating microsoft, it's about the fact that you guys are blind to the fact that they are forcing you to answer these questions solely to get your information to use to try to make more money off you. They will sell it to whoever wants it, they will use it to target ads at you, and they will use it for any other commercially viable way they think up in the future. No, it's not just microsoft, many companies pull crap like this. Apple does this, too, when you buy a new mac. Nintendo doesn't, however. They didn't ask me for any personal information when I hooked up the wii to the internet (or if they did, it was optional). I guess you guys just don't mind getting mountains of junkmail and telemarketing calls. And "just a name and address" is an awful lot of information. How about this, I'll give it to them when all their employees post their names and addresses at a place I can look at them.

if they want to waste their money on postage to send me trash i don't mind... i'd rather get some junk mail than wait all day wondering if the mail is running late or not




no call list... and a caller id for the few you may get while on the list

and trying to deny the tinfoil hats right before saying stuff that is one step away from showing us a picture of your tinfoil hat collection... sometimes i wonder


p.s. ... i'm in the black helicopter hovering over your house

.... What the hell are you smoking?

I just created a Silver Account for ****s and giggles. It NEVER asked me for a credit card number ANYWHERE. The most invasive their information gathering GETS is an age (for verification you're over 18, because they restrict Live if you're under age, they need a day so they know when to LIFT that restriction), and your address for their records. For when you call support. About having it serviced. So they know where to send your BOX. Also so they can use it to verify you are who you say you are.

If you consider any of that to be awful.... what the hell? This is all **** you fill out virtually ANY TIME you sign up or register for something.

ESRB requires a full birthday in order to comply with their guidelines. Since XBL does so, they use the full birthday.

Address, as mentioned before, is required for numerous things, not just because "they want it".

I have never, ever, ever received a phone call or piece of mail from Microsoft after getting XBL. Nor have I received anymore email in my email box. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that any of your statements on the security of that information is correct.

exactly.

The do-not-call list does not apply to businesses with whom you already have a relationship.

CM, are you seriously blind to microsofts security record!? People have stolen the windows source code, people have broken into hotmail and gotten access to the entire db of users (including every piece of information you typed in to sign up).

http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+security+breach&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I still don't buy this stuff about the address, you guys are just smokin' koolaid as they say. As I mentioned, I didn't have to type in anything like that for the nintendo wii. Of course, if it breaks, I would expect that in order to send it back and for them to fix it and send it back to me, I would have to provide a name and address, but it's not a condition of me playing online, browsing their online store, using their integrated web browser or weather channel, etc.

Why is it that you guys assume that every company you do business with has the right and responsiblity to "verify who you are" every step of the way? Are you living in a dream world? When I go buy a set of tires from les schwab, I don't have to provide anything. When I buy auto parts, computers, groceries, electronics, furniture, virtually anything on the planet, I'm not required to do this. This is something recently invented and makes no sense, no matter how much you try to justify it.

Also, immediately after signing up, I started getting stuff in my email box from microsoft (and yes, I did uncheck the "send me junk email" box and I did uncheck the "share all my information with your partners" boxes when I signed up).

Unless you pay with a credit card... then you typically have to verify identity... as far as 'using a service' you shouldn't need to be identified.

The Wii does ask for information when you buy something from the wii store if i remember correctly. But it asks each time (it doesn't save, nor offer to save your info).

*shrug*
You can use fake information if it really bothers you, but I get the feeling you have a problem with the fact that they ask in the first place.

You're always so paranoid, Brian. You make yourself seem like an old timer when you talk like that.

I'm just curious - who says this?

No, I don't care if they ask, I just think it should not be required. I can't skip the screen if I don't want to put it, so I'm forced into either lying or providing information I don't want to, I don't like either case.

So having problems with my personal information being spread to every company in existence so they can advertise to me more makes me an "old timer?" Regardless of that, I *am* old now, I turned 30 last month. I have a son, I have two step kids, all three of which I ask not to give out any of their personally identifying information to toysrus employees or myspace (do you ever read the news? -- maybe news is just for "old timers"). Anyway, you confuse paranoia with privacy and respect for your customers. This is different than not wanting governments or others in power to have too much power, this is different than a surveillance society run by government agencies, this is simply about companies wanting way too much information from their customers even when their customers (me) don't want to provide it.

Being paranoid has to do with believing a company or agency *might* do something to you, but in this case, we *know* they are doing it. They use that information for telemarketing, ad targetting, and sharing with other companies, who in turn use it for the same purposes (including reselling it again to others). This is a fact, not a fiction or something that might happen. Read the license agreement. It's not unreasonable to not want your personal information spread everywhere.

Have you ever been a victim of credit card fraud or identity theft? My wife's purse was stolen and believe me, it's a huge, huge hassle to get everything squared away. She got sent to collections for things that weren't even hers. Further, it's not just things being stolen from purses. My information has been stolen no less than a dozen times. The most notable have been when a credit card processor got hacked and everyone's information whose cards had been processed by them were stolen, and when the VA had one of their laptops stolen, all my personal information was in there (name, address, birthdate, social security number, military service record, marital status, dependent status, etc.). I believe I had an account at hotmail when their list of subscribers info, usernames, and passwords were stolen (which means someone had access to any email I had in their system). The point is, it's much more prudent to limit who has your information, because you can't trust them to keep it safe.

Now, when I say that, I'm not saying they're not trying. But the fact is, they can try as hard as they want to keep it safe. They can hire security people, make firewalls, etc., but things happen and information is lost. That's why it simply makes more sense to make sure your info isn't spread out everywhere.

Let me give you another example. I worked at a company that had a very large e-commerce site that literally did millions of dollars of business per month (more around nov/dec). When I got there, I found out they were storing people's credit card information (number, exp. date, name, address, the 3-4 digit card code on the back of the card, etc.) forever. I mean, there was no deletion process. The card numbers were not encrypted and the server everything was on was web-accessible and easily hacked (outdated software with published vulnerabilities).

So now we have examples of companies large and small with either published information leaks/hacks/losses or completely insecure ways of storing personal information, and I should still trust these guys? It just makes no sense.