Ok, so here’s an update that I didn’t really expect to see. To be honest, it’s more that I just never really thought about it.
The voice quality over Xbox Live has never been great, heck… when I think about it, it actually took me a while to understand what people were even saying when I first got my Xbox 360. When the service was released with the original Xbox, people were just so happy they could chat to each other that no one really cared.
That however, was back in the day of SUPER HIGH SPEED 64K internet lines that could handle such witchcraft.
While the upgrade sounds cool, I do see a few issues regarding bandwidth starved countries such as ours.
Xbox Live Studios head honcho Jerry Johnson (sounds like a pr0n name) announced that they will be updating the Xbox Live voice communication system towards the end of this year along with Kinect’s release, saying:
“The codec we used when we first launched was a low bit rate codec and we stuck with that,”
“We launched and we said we required broadband. We required a 64k connection, which not many people think of as broadband any longer. But that was the minimum requirement to run the service at the time.
“It’s time for us to move on. Especially if we want to think about broadening – a crackly headset on the top of your head – not what people think of when they talk about popular entertainment.”
Ok… so here’s the issue. Being someone who know runs on an uncapped account, I’m pretty happy about the upgrade. The problem comes in with all of those folks out there who are still using capped, prepaid or 3G connections to get their online fix.
Clearer voice quality means more bandwidth, and more bandwidth being used for voice means less bandwidth being used for the important stuff, like actually playing games. This also means that slower connections that were just fast enough to handle online gaming now have to dedicate line speed to the voice, which means that games may become laggy.
If we are lucky, Microsoft will be smart enough to give people the option to choose what sort of voice quality suits them best. If not… let’s just hope it doesn’t piss on some people’s online parade.
It also makes sense to me that if Microsoft want the Kinect microphone to work like a conference call system for your room they need to vastly improve the quality otherwise ain’t nobody gonna hear nuttin’.
So we get a nice upgrade, I just hope that it doesn’t cause issues for a lot of you folks out there.
Source: Eurogamer
Last Updated: August 27, 2010
Fox1
August 27, 2010 at 09:41
I doubt it will slow anything down much because local Live makes the network faster than what we used to on 384k.
The guy formerly known as Bonk, Super_Bonk and Fallen_Angel
August 27, 2010 at 09:53
Great Header Image. You in form today Gavin :devil:
spl0it
August 27, 2010 at 10:05
I do CISCO VOIP for a living, they will probably upgrade to the G.711 codec which requires 82kbs, I suspect they were using G.729 which uses 32kbs, so its not such a big deal if you are running 512kbs and over.
easy
August 27, 2010 at 11:29
i didn’t know they stacked shit that high?!
al360
August 27, 2010 at 13:19
hahahahah
ya anyone with a 1mb line would be fine people with 512mb lines still have issues but if they put a local server down then i’m sure it should be fine for 384 as well (or am i wrong)
AC!D
August 27, 2010 at 13:48
Speaking of Xbox Live i noticed when i went to pick up Mafia 2 at BT games that in their monthly catalogue book they listed Xbox live South Africa for November instead of September. I hope they are wrong otherwise its another 2 month delay.
moegoe
August 27, 2010 at 15:59
According to what I’ve been told, we will not have an infrastructure set up here in SA. Instead we will have local billing, access to use SA as a region, etc, etc, etc.