Currently I am seriously considering purchasing an X-Box partly due to the online ADSL capability. After reading the Microsoft site and speaking with an X-Box customer service advisor, I have gathered the following. The X-Box will not be able to surf the net but only connect to a dedicated X-Box server to play X-Box games online. Connection to the server WILL require a subscription. Now I am a bit pi$$ed that you spend £300 on the machine, £30 a month for ADSL, buy the game, and now Microsoft will want £xx per month to play.

Is this right ?

 

Its the way online gaming on the Internet is going .. I have been playing Online games (quake world- Quake3) since 96-97 and it has allways been free, but recently one of the top Server/league company's Barrysworld went into Liquidation, they got saved by Electronice B, but even though the servers are still free to join, they are talking about a yearly charge so u can connect to there online servers.. It cant be helped..In the long run that is..

Having said that, this is Microsoft we ar talking about, t hey are rich enough not to charge for online gaming.. And anyway, there are ways around it..!!

 

If we want to improve online gaming then I think we need to be prepared to pay for it. Counterstrike is a prime example - perhaps if we paid to use servers then GSP's etc would run the necessary anti-cheat patches and more people would design the anti-cheat apps.

Everquest charges something like £10 a month to use their online service and that must be one of the most popular games after CS so obviously the demand and willingness to pay is there.

 

alternatively, just put a second network card in your adsl pc, connect this straight to xbox using the gamespy settings and away you go