Kraft is an Xbox Live beta tester now

[KraftSLU]

Thats right, I am going to be receiving my copy of Xbox Live in the mail in the next 2 days having been selected a beta tester! I am getting 3 games with it, MotoGP, Whacked! and Fever2003 to play online. I'll have to tell you all how it is later!

[jjmoohead]

Thats awsome,

does that mean that when the public version comes out they will send you that or at least the updates too. Do you get to play free online once its made public aswell or do you still have to fork out the money for a new xbox live package and $10 a month to play it after the testing is done?

[KraftSLU]

I pay the normal price for the online kit, and all of the beta testing is free time for me. I play online for free until it is publicly available at which point my actual year of free play begins.

[Rei]

Well, congrats man! That's really cool! :cool:

[Harry]

Have a lot of fun man!

[Daedaelus]

Good for you! Out of curiosity: How long before the public release are you getting it?

[AudioBoxer]

Thats pretty tight, I know how it feels to do that! I got a chance to be one of the 750 people to be a beta tester for the DC!

[KraftSLU]

Originally posted by Iguana
Good for you! Out of curiosity: How long before the public release are you getting it?

Only about a month. This was the second wave of betas making the total count around 35,000 online right now. But either way, I get to try it out and make friends a month ahead of the rest :)

[Daedaelus]

Another quick question KraftSLU: Where did you sign up for beta testing? At xbox.com?

[KraftSLU]

Originally posted by Iguana
Another quick question KraftSLU: Where did you sign up for beta testing? At xbox.com?

Yup. From what I understand; that was most likely the last wave of betas before the actual release date, but you can always sign up just in case.
`

[RobHardo]

Hey i have a friend who is a beta tester now also. Its so awesome. I wish I could be but I dont have an x-box

[Black Heart]

How do they select testers among all the people who are requesting to become one?

[Daedaelus]

Originally posted by goodman
Do you need a Xbox to be a beta tester? Shucks i might not get the chance then!! :laugh:

LMAO!! :laugh:

[KraftSLU]

Ok, the verdict is in and *drum roll* XBox Live is freaking awesome! Everything I ever imagined it could be, it lived up to. Lag free games, real-time voice... All played out wonderfully.

So far I have played Whacked!, MotoGP, NFL Fever 2003 and Sega NFL 2K3 online. I can imagine that MotoGP is probably the most bandwidth taxing of them all, most games I played had 16 racers in them. And lord help me, no lag and I got to trash talk and meet people from all over the world. It is especially cool to actually get to talk to and game against my fellow xbox gamers that I know online from different places.

The only downfall right now is there aren't enough games out for Live. If you are a sports fan you are doing fine, as 4 of the 5 live enabled games at the moment are sports. But soon there will be Unreal Champ, Clancy's Ghost Recon, Mech Assault and many more, so this is only a temporary problem. Besides, the voice option in the game automatically increases the fun factor of a game. I really don't care much for motorcycle racing, but chatting with 10 different people from across the country/globe while we race makes a huge difference.

By the way, one feature that I thought was going to be dumb and crappy, voice masking, turns out to actually work very well. There is no voice distorition and you can totally understand what peoplw with voicemask are saying! Anyways, enough rambling for me. If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

[GaseousSnake]

How much does every thing cost to get hooked up with XBL including console and subscription?

[KraftSLU]

Xboxes are $200 which includes the system and 1 controller. 50 dollars gets you the Xbox Live setup disk, the voice communicator and one game that has not been officially determined yet. So 250 in all (unless you get a used xbox for 150, then you can get the whole caboodle for 200 bucks).

[GaseousSnake]

Wow i think im gona get one pretty soon when it comes out

[Uchiha Sasuke]

Wow gaseous actually thinking about getting an xbox.Guess thats pretty damn cool.As far as xbox live i was a little skeptical at first.Now that i heard what kraft said it sounds a whole lot better.I just hope when it comes to monthly fee's that it won't be a big hassle to pay them.

[KraftSLU]

There are no monthly fee's in sight. There are rumors that MS is making the 2nd year of subscription 50 dollars just like the first year (which I don't think is that unreasonable... seeing as how I am paying over 480 for DSL). Also, in case people didn't hear, the one game that there was going to be extra monthly charges for (pso) will no longer have a monthly charge!!! and not only is it free to play on xbl, but the xbox version gets an exclusive race of characters not available to GC.

[GaseousSnake]

Is it possible for me to use a PAL xbox to log on to XBL?

[KraftSLU]

yes sir, XBL is a world service and there are already beta testers from every continent.