I just got a 360 Premium and now I have some questions regarding Live!

First, does the 360 come with a free month of Live! or anything? I read people download demos on the "marketplace" but I also read about "points". Do you have to BUY points in order to download demos?

I think it's crap you have to pay for Live! and I think they put the price at $6 a month (roughly) just so you say "well it's ONLY $6".. I mean, I buy a PC game and I can play online because I am PAYING FOR MY INTERNET ALREADY!!

Anywho.. I don't really want to rant as much as I want to know exactly what it's for (points, demos, etc)..

Thanks dudes!

I don't know if the 360 comes with a free trial of Gold. All 360s have Live Silver built in when you create your gamertag. I think that gives you a free month, but I am not certain.

If you don't buy the Live Gold account, you can still play all the games, you just can't play them online against other people. You will be able to, once in a while like this weekend when they offer a free Live Gold weekend.

It is a pain to pay $50 a year to play online, but that $50 covers every game and the Live system is great for online gaming with others.

The points are unnecessary, unless you want to buy things from the marketplace like gamer pictures, themes for your dashboard, or arcade games. In the marketplace, you can find free downloads of demos or movie trailers. Sometimes you can find free pictures, etc. The arcade games all let you download them and try them. That way, you can see if you like it before you spend the money on points. 1600 points will run you roughly $20.

What do you mean by this? If you don't have a Live subscription you can still play all what games?

If you don't subscribe to Live, you can still play the Xbox games. You just won't be able to go online and play against other people if the game has online multiplayer.
For instance, if you bought the new Ghost Recon game for the 360, but don't subscribe to Live. You can play Ghost Recon all you want, but you won't be able to go online and play any of the multiplayer gametypes.

To be fair in your comparison, you are aware that there are PC games which you must pay for to play online, right? And that's just to play ONE game, not all for a platform.

Quoted for truth Xbox live is fkn awesome. And if you aren't much of an online gamer at least you can still track your stats and see what others are doing online and try all the demos and see movie trailers. It's a thing of beauty.

Oh and this weekend is the free Gold bullshit weekend.

Why do you think it is bullshit?

Well considering how much it sucks getting stuck playing with all the little kiddies in games such as say........Halo basically all the ones who's mommy and daddy didn't feel like spending the $6 a month fee for live will be raping the servers this weekend in every single game you can imagine, which will cause massive problems and annoyance. But if you only stick with your friends and don't do any sort of optimatch you may be okay.

*Edit: And I think Just for fun I'm going to call MS and demand to be reimbursed the fifty cents or whatever for the weekend. Why should I pay for something that's free?

I'm a huge gamer and I LOVE online gaming (so far I've only done PC).. So, I got 4 games (Ghost Recon, PDZ, Condemned, and PGR3), will anyone here be playing any of these games late tonight?

So, do people mostly just game with the same group of friends or what?

You can reference my gaming Calendar if you'd like to see what games people play on what days. It's a good way to get together with other people here and make some friends. XBL Gaming Calendar Link

Whoa, how come I've never seen that Calendar? Great now I'll know when you guys will be on with which game.

I wish there was a way to put XBL Friends into groups. That way I could have a DVD Talk group, etc.

That was one of the things I was hoping the new Live system would have when the 360 was announced.

I wish there was a middle finger emoticon for these forums, but we don't always get want we want now do we ladies?

Just be aware the calendar for many people right now looks like Mon-Sat: Oblivion

There is more to LIVE now than playing games and it should only get better from here on out. If you feel that 6.00 a month is too rough than enjoy your Silver account while all us Gold members are living it up.

yes if you make a live account you get one free month of gold which means you can play online with your friends. if you stick with the silver then all you can do is play xbox live arcade and download content. points you do buy they get charged to your live account billing. so what that means is if you get a game say GRAW and want to play online with me, martin5, canis, golucky, czar, etc here from dvdtalk you will have to have a gold account because that is the one that will let you in matchmaking with us. if all you want to do is download demos and movie trailers and play xbox live arcade games then you just need a silver account. and if you want to buy any content you will need the points and either a gold or silver account.

if you want live go buy yourself the member card for $50 because if you don't it will cost you $96 by month to month billing because they raised the price to $8 a month.

and if you're into pc games thinking "well live sucks because i have to pay for it" then maybe it isn't for you. because instead of pecking at a keyboard you're going to hear people call you a jackass and scream in your ear. on the upside if you find a good group of friends then you can talk to each other and when they do some dumb shit scream out "DEEE DE DEEEEE you fucking jackass why'd you do that you got us killed".

also know that xbox live is a peer to peer service, so you're online gaming is only going to be as good as your Internet connection. If you've got above 256k upload and 1.5 or higher download then you'll have a great time 98% of the time. if you're one of the people who has a shitty cable company that caps at 256k then some games will never work well for you online at all. also you will need an open NAT to make the best of live.

now go get some of the games we play so we can kick your ass!!!

Ok, I started my free live gold month.. Decided to try some GRAW. I join up a game and here a bunch of ghetto kids m'fin every two seconds.. Couldn't really understand what they were sayin.. This was in the "lounge" I guess waiting for the game to start.. Then the game starts and I hear no one on the headsets..

Couple quesitons..

A. How do I avoid going into rooms like this?
B. Can you only talk in the waiting for the game to launch area?
C. So should I just find the thread with all the DVDtalkers live tags and add them all to my "friends"? Then how do I get into games with just you guys?

Thanks!

A. Don't join up in matchmaking using quickmatch or searching for a random room.
B. You only talk to those waiting for the next game to start and those that have died in the current game.
C. This is the best route. Add the gamertags of people from the DVDTalk GamerTag list that have the games you have listed. When you see them on in GRAW, or another game you have, send a message asking for an invite. Usually, unless the room is full, you will get a game invite and can have fun.

We're all pretty laid back, no trash talking(sometimes in fun, but only because we've been playing together for almost 2 years and a few we know in person).

Before Halo 2 came out I only ever played Counter Strike on live and had basically zero friends on live, I just joined random rooms constantly and it sucked big time. Even the people who were on my friend list sucked because they were never on.

Enter Halo 2..........hooked up with a bunch of good guys from this website and played everyday for months and had an absolute blast playing with everyone. 1.5 years later settled into a really awesome core list of guys I play with on a regular basis with each new release it seems I get at least one or two more people who play multiple games and are alot of fun. Halo 2 has become a bit of a joke with all of the cheating and general lack of any sort of chaos control. But now we have a ton of different games we can play and I plan on sticking with the same guys for the forseeable future.

I had almost the same experience. Halo has become almost unplayable now due to the cheating and such. Playing the games co-op with everyone has been awsome and made things online a ton more fun. Well except for that Martin character, he is a troublemaker.

I played some Halo Saturday night and it wasn't too bad. If there are any other noobs out there, here is the list of people who play regularly these days:

CzarCastic
Canis Firebrand
Duster72
goLUCKY
MARTIN5
UncleGramps
Mac N Tosh
Chiwotweiler
xmiyux

Then there are some other regulars who don't post here like Slitt and some other guys. If you send all of us friend requests you should be able to find a game every night between 8 and 10 EST. Then, you can send friend requests for anybody else we're playing with.


I know we played with some new (free) people over the weekend -- Jonw9 and a couple others. Are you guys going to join gold?

Also, if you had a bad experience this weekend, it's probably due to the overloaded servers. I got frustrated enough to just quit playing, so I'm sure it was bad for everyone. Also, the Oblivion craze should pass in a couple weeks so we can get back to the ususal Halo/Graw/Burnout.

Hm.. I thought you could actually talk IN game.. Like when your in GRAW you can tell everyone where your at and stuff and to "cover me" and queer stuff like that .

So you can only talk while in the waiting room?

No, you CAN talk IN-GAME. If you join late or you die (in games that only allow you ONE death)....you can only talk to people in the room.

Also, I know there have been a few issues with chat in-game. I have a friend who could NOT chat in the game...but private chat worked fine.


As for your original post...$50 is a fair price for the service they offer. The MS POINTS situation is another story...it gives conusmers the false impression of how much things cost. Some games are a bit overpriced in the XLIVE Arcade.

The points remind me of Dave and Busters. I never have any idea how much the games cost.