Xbox Live returns with Message Center integration

I'm glad to have the gold :)

Does this mean we can start spamming xbox live now? :)

Damn what the hell is going on? I wanted some good stuff I could use... like background downloading... but no. After my Gold 1 month trial expires over the weekend, and the week free is done, this update crap won't do me any good

this wasn't a dashboard update to add features, it was more a network update to upgrade the network and servers to prepare for all the E3 traffic and such when MS starts loading all the video and stuff on. For all we know MS is going to announce a huge live! update at E3 next week, there not going to let any cats out of the bag now. Obviously the network needed to be upgraded for some sort of new features, I just don't think there available...yet.

Your comments: Yay.

I can't believe this next-gen machine is still incapable of downloading in the background. That's something a last-last-last-last-last-last generation PC could do. Oh, how I long to play a game while downloading a game. It would be sort of like a three-way, without all the mess.

At least it beats the infamous "update to prepare your console for future updates" update of a couple months back.

*Runs quickly from room, for fear of being called a fanboy*

I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but who asked for this?

Not only did it update the lie service but I also got charged for 2000 microsoft points that I did not purchase!!

"I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but who asked for this?"

do people have to ask, really? i mean, seriously, no one asked for Katamari Damacy.

of course, no one "asked" for the atomic bomb, either, technically speaking.

point being, it doesn't matter. it's there now, and some people will wonder why they hadn't thought of it before/wonder how they ever lived without it.

What I guess I really meant to say is I feel this is somewhat of a misallocation of manpower, and that it only appeals to a portion of Xbox Live Subscribers. Is every new feature going to appeal to 100% of subscribers? Of course not, but in all Honesty what kind of self-important ass cannot wait to get out of the office/school/etc.. to check their Live messages? I just feel that the good people at Microsoft could have come up with something a little better than this, especially for a day of downtime.(I understand there were also preparations of the E3 content,etc....)
I'm not angry, i'm not stomping my feet and waving my fists, i'm just wondering why not give the community things that it has been asking for first, then work stuff like this in later.

to the people that request background loading. do you really wanna slow down a server on xbox live just because you are downloading a demo or trailer? do you realize the bandwidth that would be lost due to this? on the pc you will get kicked from a server if you are downloading while playing because you raise the ping of everyone else playing that game. any geek would know that

Are we supposed to care? This is what the outage was for? Well colour me unimpressed.

As for the playing while downloading goes, I just play my Gamecube while stuff downloads. ;)

Nice to see you guys going into more detail about what the messaging details most other sites just seem to be reporting "oh xbox.com you can now do messaging from there". I sent in a tip over to the 360 site requesting something along the lines of this very post, and by the time I check out joystiq it was up and had been since before me putting in the tip. Oh well thanks for the information.

By the way, I wanted this feature, a lot of people I know on live I don't know on any other form of messenger, so you can now use the my xbox site as a form of email/messaging.

I'm sure there were some other things tacked on that will be unleashed next week during e3, but I think most of the maintainence was just that, making sure everything was working correctly. The other part was some slight upgrades for the massive invasion that the silver users will bring all week next week, and also all of the content that will be on hand.

I agree, it's a great feature. I do most of my friends list management on xbox.com. This feature now means I can send out messages to friends while I'm at work to organise a game or two in the evening.

You can't always have the 360 on to watch for messages, some of our better halves have soaps to watch.

A great feature?? WTF they CHARGE you to use a messaging service that should be FREE for all. I mean come on people....

And only so many messages a day? This is utter crap. And its a crap update from a company that should be able to deliver ALOT more.

i'll have whatever the haters are having... because apparently i don't have enough.

would it really be breaking news that a pc from over a decade ago could download something in the background while doing something else in the foreground? complaining about the 360's inability to do so doesn't make it news either (aside from the fact that it isn't even really the topic of this post).

[sarcasm]
heck, why didn't ps1 have a full-featured web browser? i mean, come on... every pc in the world was capable of running one of those at the time it was new... so what gives? why doesn't my car drive itself... it's obviously technology we've been capable of for at least a decade. i just want somebody to tell me what console actually *does* download 500mb demos in the background... i'd love to own one. with all this talk about how horrible the 360's downloading is, surely there must be an alternative out there.
[/sarcasm]

no company can hold a gun to your head when it comes to your personal entertainment (unless your idea of entertainment is letting your friend hold a gun to your head, in which case your company is actually holding a gu---nevermind)... or your ability to pay for it...
after all, the naysayers could always ditch all the consoles that are probably daisy-chained to their tv set and just become a pc gamer... it might reduce their stress level since console gaming is apparently so far below the exalted standards of those people who don't even know bits from bytes. With pc gaming you can have your cake and eat it too--no matter what gripe you have, there's usually an alternative waiting for you. In virtually every other consumer market, when people don't like something... they either opt not to purchase it, or acquire an alternative... they don't go out and buy one and then talk about how horrible it is because they were lied to and suckered into purchasing it due to clever marketing.


#4, Sloopydrew: regardless of who you are and what you stand for [even if it's just your own opinion]... i, for one, firmly believe you are *not* actually not a fanboy. "flat-out hater" would be more accurate. i just hope i'll see you put as much time into your complaints about the revo/wii and the ps3 when you purchase those later in the year. i look forward to your 'constructive' criticisms. ;-)

#13, Fan: they aren't charging you for this "feature". if you have a gold subscription, then it's just a new ability you didn't already have... and if you *don't* have a gold sub... it's STILL something you didn't already have.
just cry microsoft a river.

I'm pretty happy about this. It'll give me something to do while I'm at work aside from refreshing Joystiq.

I personally don't really want or care about background downloading since it would probably cause a lot of slowdown. I think a download queue would be a better solution. That way you can just let your downloads run while you're asleep. Wake up to fresh new content.

To anyone who's complaining that this update wasn't what they wanted: What specifically did you yourself do to let Microsoft know what you did want? If your answer is 'nothing' or 'posted on an internet thread about it' then assume everyone else did the same and so this is what you get.

I thought the messaging and all the other stuff EXCEPT the actual online multiplayer was available to Silver?

"#4, Sloopydrew: regardless of who you are and what you stand for [even if it's just your own opinion]... i, for one, firmly believe you are *not* actually not a fanboy. "flat-out hater" would be more accurate. i just hope i'll see you put as much time into your complaints about the revo/wii and the ps3 when you purchase those later in the year. i look forward to your 'constructive' criticisms. ;-)"

Fanboy of what, dear sir? If the Revo/Wii suck as much as the 360 has so far, I will criticize the hell out of them. I preferred the original Xbox over the PS2. Actually, I probably played it more than the GameCube. But the 360 has, in my opinion, been a near disaster. That doesn't make me a fanboy of the PS3 or the Wii. It just makes me a realist. If you can't accept it, that's your problem. Thanks for reading.

That was MS PR. They apparently like to make a lot of false promises. Sort of like Sony. Even Nintendo is guilty. But MS is, in my humble opinion, the worst. I'd love to see them leave the "gaming" industry to be replaced by a new Sega console or another company entirely. MS couldn't even get software right. What made them think they could do hardware?

Anything extra is good. Sure, this probably wasn't worth taking the servers down for the best part of a day, but it's still more than we could do 2 days ago. Background downloading would be nice, too, but the machine already works fine without it. The solution is just to start your downloads before going to bed!

I never noticed an outage. I got home at 5:30 eastern and jumped on live without a prob.

I really don't understand what all the complaining is about......you got a great new feature for live and xbox.com free.

Sloopydrew...why all the hate towards MS and 360? Are you still having a hard time finding one? Did MS take your first born?

I love my 360...its fun to play with friends, it's got a shit load of games I'm really excited about coming soon, it has great features that have never been done on a consol before (IMO make it truly next gen).

Sure it has its share of problems...shit I remember when I had my PS1; it froze all the time so I had to have the console upside down to play it because of heat issues.
I remember 3 months after owning my PS2 it wouldn't play DVDs anymore and eventually stopped playing games.
I even had to replace my Xbox (not the 360) because of disc read errors.

All consoles have their issues but competition is good so don't hate, appreciate (had to say it) what MS has brought to the table...shit if it wasn't for live Sony and Nintendo probably wouldn't offer their "Live" style services.

I own all last gen consoles and I will own all next gen…competition is good so bring on the games.

@ Todd Rabanus

you're a fucking idiot. lets go through your comment.

"to the people that request background loading. do you really wanna slow down a server on xbox live just because you are downloading a demo or trailer?"

WHAT!?!!!!
First: The content servers are most assuredly NOT the same servers authenticating, matching, and setting up mulitplayer games. Xbox live games are not HOSTED on ms servers. They're hosted by a client. (XBL servers are still involved in the client syncing and authentication, but for all intents and purposes are NOT hosting the game). If you're playing AND you're downloading, and your bandwidth is squeezed dry, it won't make you the server. Nuff' said. If you're laggy because you're downloading stuff, YOU suffer lag, NOT the rest the server. Again, LAG from a shortage of bandwidth on YOUR end only effects YOU, not the rest of the clients or the server. If you're slow, it sucks for you. Not everyone. (thats why people claim LAG! when killed, stating that their lag held them behind, while everyone else is running just fine. This can also make other players appear to be FASTER than a lagged player, as he gets updates in 'sperts' and the clients' engine rushes to resync with server game time) Whatever knowledge you believe you have to support otherwise is FALSE. If the game (like Burnout:Revenge) is hosted by the developer, its hosted on their servers/bandwidth/etc, and is still not effected by downloading from MS's XBL Content servers.
Second: We don't even know WHAT exactly else they're going to allow us to do while downloading (a feature that WILL be implimented, so learn to accept it). It could just be they allow us to watch the content we have downloaded, or listen to the music, or do WMCenter extender functionality. (IE:dashboard activities), or possibly only Live! Arcade games.
In ANY case, we'll have to wait and see.

"do you realize the bandwidth that would be lost due to this?"

MS has the bandwidth. trust me. again, the only way it effects everyone is everyone might get their download slower.

"on the pc you will get kicked from a server if you are downloading while playing because you raise the ping of everyone else playing that game."

Ok, what fucking game are you playing? PC games are played PRIMARILY with a client-server model (Most RTS's are an exception, but I doubt that is to what you're referring). Meaning, you connect with the server. The server sends you packets (or information, if you're unfamiliar) about server conditions and other player data. Now, either your bandwidth is fast enough to receive that data timely, or it isn't. The server is NOT going to wait around for you ack (return packets awknowledging you received all info) and fuck up the rest of the server. I'm not aware of any game that could ever suffer from slow clients and effect the entire server. If thats the case with the game, its a shitty, poorly-designed game. The other, more likely culprit of lag is UPLOAD speeds. Most broadband connections suffer from highly asymmetrical bandwidth, (meaning one direction is much faster than the other.) Again, most people might have 768kb-1.5mb down, but only 128kb-512kb up. Using half of your 1.5mb down bandwidth leaves PLENTLY of download bandwidth for communication. Its the UPLOAD that typically suffers. 128k is often Insufficiant to maintain smooth gameplay with modern games. And if your PC's are laiden with spyware and malware, thats more upload bandwidth being stolen from you without your knowledge.

"any geek would know that"

what kind of fucking geek are you? You really need to re-educate yourself in the realms of online gaming, software development, networking, and common sense.
Please don't claim to be a 'geek' as to establish credibility without any knowledge of the subject, it makes it really hard to not think of you as a douche.

damn someone got owned haha

The one thing that you guys forgot to talk about was the private chat feature which alows 2 friends to talk to eachother while in different games, on dasboard, or watching dvds so i can be playing GRAW and my friend could be playing Battlefield and we can chat