In reply (thanks to all who did)

a) Wow. It would seem smarter (in my opinion) to give everyone access to play together (p2p à la PC-server, with central server for authentication only) and charge people for an account which gives things such as achievements/perks for being a member. Access to demos, trials, etc. I dunno, it just feels wrong how it works. I agree to pay for more content, but the gaming aspect should be free...you know, cause you bought the game to play it. Everything else that "adds" to the experience should be chargeable, I agree. It's up to the consumer to decide what he/she should purchase, as stupid as most of it truly is to purchase.

b) So, even though we purchased the game Rock Band, we will not have access to purchase its additional content with a free silver account? I hope this isn't true, I hope I've misread. (i.e the other understanding I got from reading your messages, is that we may have to wait a little before we can buy them) Since we already purchased several songs over the marketplace, after our trial expires, can we continue to play the songs? We're moving shortly (wife got a job out of town) and will likely be without Internet for a while; question: can she still play them offline? Can we continue to buy songs with a silver account? (i.e. buy points from EBgames, add them to silver account, buy new song packs?)

c) 100$ for w.lan access? Seriously? My god. Are there 3rd party adapters (i.e. usb adapter) that will work? Wow...I guess I'll stick with my 50ft CAT5e running the baseboards, across the hallway and down into the living room. :)

d) Sadly, I am not surprised.

e) Thank you Joseph. I'll look into that. Good place to start, anyhow. I found some help on other forums which require 3rd party installs (media control, FFDshow on sourceforge.net) to allow it to run.

Someone said the 50$ (60$ here in Canada) a year is worth the money? I dunno, I have always considered playing online (MoH, CoD1,2,4, BF, WiC) fun in itself, but to pay for additional "extras" which actually don't add any value to your gaming experience? My friend (as I discussed this with him over the phone) explained that when FF XIII is released, it will be a MMO type that charges an additional monthly fee to play online? I'm baffled that people pay, and they will, for this.

Anyway, with the recent E3 (as well as other recent gaming events) and obvious amelioration in game design for all systems, it'll be interesting to see if M$ can continue its trend of charging so much for so little when other platforms offer it for free. We bought ours so we could play with some of our friends online at times, but to pay to play? c'mon... :(

Thanks for the head's up guys. Obviously a couple answers/opinions are always welcome. :)

PEACE

Hey all,

We recently bought a 360, more-so for the wife than for me (I am more of a PC gamer) but I was hoping to have a concrete answer to a couple questions.

a) Can I play online for free? As in, the "silver" account that comes free with the system (1 month gold), can I play against anyone or with anyone else online? I was under the impression I HAD to buy a gold account to play it online. From what I've gathered, the gold account gives you things such as achievements and other things I could care less for. I just want to, as an example, rent CoD4 or something, and join and play on servers. Is this possible with a free account?

b) I could care less about things in the marketplace (i.e. videos, demos, etc), but my wife would like to buy song packs (i.e. we already purchased NiN, SoaD) for Rock Band, is this possible with a free silver account? Another example would be the extra maps made for purchase in CoD4.

c) I gathered that the 360 does not come with a wireless connection integrated (i.e. our Wii and PS3 both have it)...am I blind, or is this how it is?

d) Are there actual plans, not rumours, for a mouse/kb support to allow for RTS and FPS gameplay? I cannot stand using the controller for those two game types.

e) I recently setup my Vista Ultimate box with Media Center and configured it to communicate with our 360. I thought, as with the PS3, I could stream XVID/DIVx content from my PC to my 360, but it does not recognize it as a legit video file. I know that with the PS3, all you need to assure is that you have the right codec(s) installed on the PC for the file to stream and play properly. I want, as an example, to watch my movies I backed up on my PC (compressed XVID) without having to copy them to my 360. Can I burn the files to disc and pop them into the 360 and watch like that? My MP3 files and WMV files work fine, obviously.

I think that's it for now, I'll keep this thread opened in case some of you can answer me shortly. I am running on a free gold account (1 month trial). I just want to avoid spending 60$/year simply to play online.

PEACE

I don't really consider myself friends with my two cats, but yes, I am fond of their race. We all belong to the human race.

And not to be ignorant to the question: I am friends with whomever shows me the same respect I show myself and others. I don't differentiate between creed, skin pigment, culture. A person defines who he or she is, nor their upbringing.

PEACE

[QUOTE="mach-stem"]

Hey all,

I was hoping some of you could recommend a headset for the PS3 console.

My dad has recently started playing the online portion of NHL 08 and realized that most who play online were playing with a headset.

I imagine any Bluetooth compatible device can connect to the PS3 unit, but I more-so came here to find out if there are any specific models which most would recommend. I like my Logitech USB headset (wired) for my PC and was hoping on something similar in model/weight, etc. This will be for VoIP chatter ONLY, he runs the game's sound through his 7.1 surround.

PEACE

Jbul

I asked a similar question earlier this week, and found out that almost any Bluetooth headset, v1.7 or later will work with the PS3, most of the time. Most of the PS3 models you'll find at retail are in the 50-60$ range. You could always buy Warhawk (which I hear is a great game) for $60 and get the free headset.

Thanks for the input. My dad is more of a "only play hockey" kind of guy. ;) We've been playing NHL leagues since the Genesis games and since EA decided to remove the league option from within the game, he decided he'd try the online version. It's a nice setup: PS3 through HDMI on his 52inch Pioneer Elite on a 7.1 Onkyo system.

I don't think I like the "most of the time"..hehehe.

Thanks again

PEACE

Hey all,

I was hoping some of you could recommend a headset for the PS3 console.

My dad has recently started playing the online portion of NHL 08 and realized that most who play online were playing with a headset.

I imagine any Bluetooth compatible device can connect to the PS3 unit, but I more-so came here to find out if there are any specific models which most would recommend. I like my Logitech USB headset (wired) for my PC and was hoping on something similar in model/weight, etc. This will be for VoIP chatter ONLY, he runs the game's sound through his 7.1 surround.

PEACE

No official answer or reason = no surprise.  I guess I'll cancel my paid subscription and keep IGN's since I don't have any issues with them.

Truly sad.

EDIT: Done.  It was fun while it lasted.

I waited almost 13 days for a moderator to reference me to this thread...ugh.

My issue is pretty simple: I can normally watch most videos in stream, but 9/10 times (that's me being optimistic) it'll continuously retry to buffer the stream.  I never had this issue before a couple months ago.  I've tried off several computers, several Internet connections with the same result.

I can download, however, the same high def videos at ~700kb/sec without the annoying pauses and blips of lag during re-buffering process.  Again, this is a recent problem as seems to be the case.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=25554888&msg_id=287503452#287503452

This link is my thread discussing the issue(s) I've been having if anyone can offer any advice.

Thanks

For the streaming, see this thread. and as for the images, it happens to me too, though I just let it load and it works. Can you take a screenshot? An image speaks a thousand words.Gallego

Well, the only way I've been able to get around the black screen with screenshots has been to click the image once so that it goes to the next picture, then click the previous picture and it seems to work after that.

As for the video, I can't really take a screenshot of the problem.  Either way, the description of the problem doesn't follow along the thread you linked me to.  I can watch most of the videos, it's just that 9/10 times (or more-so all the time, I'm just being optimistic) after about 10-15% it starts up the buffering again and again, practically impossible to watch since it's so annoying.  If I download the file, however, I get a constant ~700kb/sec.  I've tried adjusting and re-adjusting all the preference settings from GS and also messing around with some of the video streaming settings within WMP.

Thanks for replying, I've been waiting for almost two weeks lol

I have the same thing with IE 7 here, and sometimes with IE6.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=25554888&msg_id=287448234#287448234

I've been having other issues as well not related to the IE version though...been happening since before I started using IE7.