by Craig Buck

Created on: November 16, 2009   Last Updated: April 27, 2010

Introduction

Xbox live is the name of the Microsofts online service for the Xbox 360. This service gives you access to a vast array of content, some of it free, and some of it at a price.

There are 2 types of membership available, namely Gold and Silver. Silver is a free membership which is available to all Xbox owners. Silver allows you access to most promotional video and feature content via the 360 dashboard but does not allow you to play games online.

So what is so special then about Xbox live? The Playstation Network is free, the Wii gives free access to its limited catalogue of online games and seeing as the Silver Xbox Live is also free, why bother paying what seems like a high amount for the Gold membership. These were my own personal sentiments when I first bought my Xbox. Coming from the Wii, I was horrified when I found out I had to pay to play online, something I had always taken for granted whilst playing Mario Kart, in fact, after my free month of live membership ran out, I didn't sign up for a paid membership straight away. The reason for this wasn't because I didn't like it, but I just wanted to buy a few more games to maximize the use I would get out of it.

Online play

The reason probably 99% of people buy the Xbox Live Gold membership is so that they can play online games. This adds another dimension to gaming as no longer do you just have to beat artificially controlled opponents, you can now take on the world and battle against other people who, like yourself, probably think they are pretty good at a particular game. With most of the popular games, you will never have a problem in being paired with an opponent. For example, when playing the new Fifa 10 game at peak times, it is not uncommon for roughly 70,000 people to be playing the same game online. This is where the Xbox dramatically scores points over the Playstation as the PSN (Playstation Network) is still very much in its infancy. Gold membership also gives you voice chat whilst playing online. Although I tend not to use this feature a great detail with strangers, there is nothing better than having a bit of verbal banter with friends during a game. This online chat is very clear and doesn't slow the game down one little bit which is amazing considering it is using the same internet bandwidth as the game. The chat is full duplex which means that more than one person can speak at any given time. There are different chat channels which mean you can either speak to one person who may

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