April 2nd 2009 7:00 am PT

I hope this update will fix the issue with the downlodable content…..if not seriouly thinking of swaping 360 for PS3 where there is no IP restrictions or s**t!!!

@FreelanceClown. Actually there are region restrictions with certain PS3 content. Just like there is with 360 content. That’s what I love about you people who blame MS for everything. You don’t seem to realize that it’s the countries that block things not MS or Sony.

The update went fine for me. If it’s addressing lag then I’m glad their doing it. Call it “Interruptions” or whatever you want =P

Well, this is good to know. I thought my 360 was going crazy a couple hours ago when I couldn’t get into mutiplayer games and than it kept disconnecting. Funny thing is that I just got the update a few minutes ago, go figure!

Just cost me a points penalty for quitting a game of gears – lol

cool – does it fix party chat?

yeah i’m only interested if it fixes the party chat drop out thing, its really bothering me…

Incidentally, a few hours ago I tried to add some points to my account. I put in the code, it says “points added”, but the points have NOT been added at all.

Live status (http://support.xbox.com/support/en/u…boxstatus.aspx) says there have been billing issues, but I don’t know if they’re the same ones from a few days ago.

Anyone else had problems over the past day or so?

That’s http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/xboxstatus.aspx

When will the party chat system be fixed? thats been around since the NXE update

I am guessing it doesn’t fix the god awful lag/slowness when pressing the guide button?

thank you Larry. hope this would fix part chat.

Hope new features will come soon !

We do need a new dash update. Heres my ideas.

.App Bar, Photo Party and Netflix are apps and don’t need to be hidden in other “blades”

.Starting Blade Option. Why does the console turn on to Spotlight? Let us choose.

.Friends list glitch, when someone pops online, it yanks you to their avatars little “room”

.More then 2 people Video Chats, PS3 has it and parties have several people. Same should be for Video Parties.

.Preview Premium themes. Pretty costly purchases and we cant preview them?

.Guide sometimes leaves a ghost image and also starts slow.

.Video Messages? 5-10 Seconds.

.Parties crash way to often. Either people get dropper or the whole thing breaks down and everyone is left in their own empty party.

.Instead of listing every individual DLC on the Browse New Page in the marketplace, how about just showing the game. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band just drown out all other new DLC that is added.

Thats all i can think of as of this time.

Didn’t you guys read what he said? no other changes or enhancements in this update, that mean it didnt help the Party Chat.

I usually do not post on this type of subject, but my experience just now was. I logged into Xbox Live, it prompted for me to agree for the update, it did the ‘system verification download and check’ (about 3 minutes), then it downloaded the update (30 seconds), then logged me out and I’ve signed in. So far so good.

@DarkGin87
That would be really neat if it did correct the Party Chat. Friends keep thinking I kicked them when everyone leaves the party one-by-one. UNO used to be notorious for that act until it was funny as the ‘survivors’ would try to guess “Who’s next to get ‘kicked randomly’ by the server?”

Would be interesting to find out if one of the games MN is referring to is Race Pro…… Can we get a list of games please?

I would really like to know which games are affected by this update.

What the hell is interruption issues?

I’d like to know what it DOES fix rather than what we’re NOT getting from this.

It’s good that you’re updating things, but I think as we’re paying for the service, we need to be told what’s being fixed.

It’s a bit like having a car repaired and them telling you, “Well, we’ve fixed a problem with your car. Guess what it is…”

What games where affected? Why would Microsoft fix it and not the developer?

You can’t just say, we’ve fixed things. WHAT IS IT!!!!

Is this to fix the laggy as hell guide?. I’m sick of that thing freezing/hanging.

I have bought a new xbox recently and Im tired of all the hang ups with the NXE.

I have no lag as my xbox is outside of the NAT but still while im in game and click on my friends list I get at least 10 seconds of pause!

It takes ages to retreive all the friend info… is this normal?

hope this fixes the extremely slow NXE.

Dashboard and Kernel version changed from 2.0.7363 to 2.0.7371

How about an update that should fix the pass code glitch? If I sign out and then sign back in, from the dashboard, it makes me put the pass code in twice for some odd reason? Yet, if I do it from the guide, only need to do once. A minor but suggestive fix for your team. This only occurs if you have signed out at some point (e.g. to use another account) and then sign back into the account with the pass code.

Also, the guide does freeze up quite a bit when you first sign in and accessing Marketplace does take some time for everything to load up. It’s convenient getting to it but a real pain having to wait for it to find the content available for download.

Lag?? I keep reading about this horrible lag when using the guide button. A lot of people are and have reported this. Yet I have zero lag when I press my guide. If we are all connected to live then we are all running the exact same version of dashboard. There has to be some common denominator here. I’m using an Elite I purchased when Elites first came out..Any one else with one of these have this issue?

A fix to the party chat would be awesome, but we are not getting it on this update

A mandatory update, to fix ‘interruption’ issues, which has interrupted anybody who was playing at the time it went live! I had to lol at this.

SegaMasterSystm from what you tell me your Elite is a Zephyr model 360 (i.e. has HDMI but pre-Falcon) my Premium is like this and I have these Guide freezes.

The only thing I could think of is that my NAT is moderate but it shouldn’t be causing horrible freezes like this especially as when I clear the cache it solves the problem (but not for long!).

My audio through HDMI is still broken.

I was thinking this was hopefully an update for 1 vs 100. They said spring would be nice to get an actual update on it of when.

No but this is MS so they probably wont until a couple weeks before and it will probably be a “NXE preview” like thing where only a few get it.

I had an idea for an option that would be nice.

Let us adjust the video overscan area!

When I do though HDMI it pushes the video over to the left. (With the Video Calibration App I get almost no red on the left and huge on the right.) With Component it is centered.

Just add something like they have in that video app where you can move the “edge of the screen” so you can zoom it out so it fits to your screen better.

Hopefully this fixes the issue I was having with my friend playing RE5 co-op over Live. We can connect and play, but after some random time have elapsed, we would get disconnected. The funny thing was that we would be in private chat and chat session was going fine, and we were both still logged into Live.

So what does it do exactly?

How about a solution to expired live ID’s. You say this is a new and rare problem, but I have been trying to redeem the same pre-paid card since December 2007 and have always got the same can’t sign in to live error even though I am signed into live when I do it. All the great advances in technology ad we can’t fix this one problem???

I have no had my red elite for two weeks (I think) and it is still in the box because I cant recover my GTag on it and if I try it will be wiped from the original launch 360.

I only have another week or so before I will have to return the new one unopened as I am using up my warranty by having it sit on the floor of my office.

PLEASE

by the way, this gamertag is only being used for online forums as the one I have had since beta days can’t be used for anything else due to this problem with live id’s

Would be nice to know what games have been suffering from these “interruption issues”… all sounds a bit vague to me.

Any news or even acknowledgment of the marketplace/guide/party chat issues yet Major?

There needs to be an update where it fixes the error codes lol. My system has been breaking on me for 2 weeks now. Will work for a few minutes than the screen goes to a bunch of random colors, all while the green ring on the console stays green.

From what I can tell, the way they addressed the RROD is by getting rid of the RROD error code lol. And the way they address their devoted customers is by telling them their console is out of warranty when it really isn’t.

Party chat drop outs is due to a lack of bandwidth on a users end. Xbox Live takes games as the priority, so if said person does not have enough bandwidth to support both the game session and chat session, said user gets dropped from the chat session.

@dive4ever
Have you ever gone to a friends and tried to recover your gamertag there? THEN transfer it to a MU (Memory UNIT)? I ask as one of my friends just bought his fiancee the red Xbox360 and he has NOT transfered NOTHING to the system, he just uses his Memory Unit and so far no issues. I will say, your issue sounds ‘special’. Dormant gamertags expire and that recent live id (gamertag association versus expired time log in access seems to sound like your issue. Am I wrong? I would suggest, get your details in order, then call the 18004myxbox and be patient.

applied with no problems. UNO was terrible this past weekend, so hopefully this will fix those problems too.

@Absyrtus I’ve had that problem sense NXE was relased. I finally just stopped using the code. I’ll need to start back in a while though as I’ve got a growing baby who likes buttons.

@warrengonline
I have spent OVER 20 hours talking to “customer” service over the last 15 months. I believe that I was the first to have the issue.

RIght from the beginning they have told me that the code is valid, but that I have a “corrupted” GTag because the associated ID went unused.

I cant use any codes of any type (and I have tons of them for various things because I always buy the premium editions of all the games)

they even went so far as to threaten to send me to collections because my subscription was overdue. (the credit card expired and I cant change it on the console due to this problem)

I told the “customer” service rep that I had the new card in my hand and was happy to give it to him so he could update things and he told me that they could not do it on their end that it had to be done on the console. See the problem??

A week later a manager finally saw the light and changed it there.

I could buy a memory card and cart it around with me (if it even worked) but I am a stubborn Pri*k and don’t think I should be forced to lay out more money for this problem.

they should have told us all from the outset that even if we did not use our id for anything else, that to keep it active we needed to log into a site with it every 60 days and none of this would have happened.

Major,

This fixed the issue I was having with the Premium Themes locking up the console when displaying the guide during game play.

I don’t know if this is directly related to what I emailed you about, but if it is, thanks a whole bunch for the quick turnaround!

Kudos to Microsoft on this update.

Will this fix the annoying hang-ups associated with practically anything online with the dashboard? Playing a game and want to see which friends are online? Hangs. Check message? Hangs. Erection? Hangs…hmm, maybe MS won’t be able to fix that last one quite as easily. Too bad.

Absyrtus, I have the same “double login” problem you do – login from the Guide works fine; login from the “My Xbox” channel requires the password twice. It’s been like that since the NXE beta. I reported it during the beta in the discussions forums that were setup, but it went unfixed.

There is a second outstanding problem from the NXE beta (which I also reported during that time). Attempting to play unrated video content when the Family Settings are enabled requires I enter a password, even when the “Unrated Video” options is set to “Allowed”. I’d love to see an update that fixes these 2 issues.

@dive4ever
Hmmm, special situation indeed. I’ve had a friend who let his account lapse last year because his credit card expired (that was on his Xbox360 console). It took him about three months before he got it taken care of. I never asked ‘how’ as he had that issue of not being able to update his account with a current credit card. Hmmm… By what you’re saying, I hate to be the bearer of bade news, but you might have to bite it and let it go. I’m sure something could be done, but I’m not an employee or user of verification process of the Live ID aspects. And by Maj’s previous blogcast (a few blogcasts ago), once expired, its expired. Now if you really want to push you SHOULD have access to your download history, correct? Get your details (gamertag in question, email, login, mailing address, issue, etc) and see if they will redeem your downloads to your new name. I somewhat doubt they will (but if you are the original owner of the console you registered the serial with I really do not see an issue of why not), but it won’t hurt to ask as you have proof of purchase and you have not violated any TOS of any form. But again, this is only MY PERSONAL assumption (and is only a shared opinion). If they can not restore your gamertag or give you codes to re-download your premium content on a new gamertag (because you did let it expire unwillingly), you’re going to have to take it for what it is worth and stop stressing over it. I know that’s bad, but the sooner you move on, the sooner your old problem will be behind you, but no forgotten. It’s 2009 and your issue was in 2007. I’ll say “Good luck.”

My point is that I am still able to get on Live and play any game I want, I just can’t use the marketplace. I doubt I could ever duplicate some of the achievements I managed to get in Halo 3 and even if I could, it would take time that a 38 year old married father of two has available. In majors last post about this issue he stated that they are working on fixing the problem, so I will wait it out. I was simply trying to prod the powers that be along a little bit with my original post.

But I appreciate your advice.

Take care

I guess until someone finds out what exactly this fixed or Major tells us, we get to keep playing the “guess what issue/game this fixed?” game here. *sigh*

@Arsenic13: You have some pretty good ideas here…

Major, I’m not sure if you read through all these comments, but surely, as you can see, there is a serious issue with the Guide being slow, freezing, ghosting. I have this issue as well. Odd thing though, it wasn’t like this when the NXE launched for me. It was speedy, and it seems that over time, it has become very slow. I’ve done all the “cache clearing” stuff and it doesn’t help the issue at all…

Another thing that has been brought up is the “double log-in” from the My Xbox screen. I thought I was the only one! This should be fixed. Signing in through the guide is fine as I only enter my code once, but remember the guide sometimes freezes for more than 10 seconds. Might as well enter the double code.

Major, I’m gonna assume this, but I’m sure you’re starting to notice the laggy/slow guide screen as well? Can you pass along to MS some info so they can fix this at least?

@SegaMasterSystem I don’t have any of the dashboard lag either. I have the Halo 3 model. Some of my friends have it but then again some of them don’t.

Didnt seem to fix the guide freezing. Just played GTAIV multiplayer, I was spectating a race, friend came online, hit guide, went to see list of recent players and the guide froze for 5+ seconds while the game also froze in the background (music and sounds kept going).

The gamerpictures, gamertag names, personal info etc is very slow to load in the guide and this slow loading causes constant freezing. Why the heck does it have to wait to draw the pictures before it can continue rendering the next blade or page.

Worst of all is that many of the gamerpictures are the same OVER AND OVER and should be easily accessible from the hdd cache with no need to fetch them online and it still is a hard task for the guide to render them.

Does the new update fix the problem with the dormant windows live accounts?
If not, when it’s expected to be released?

I agree, are you guys ever gonna address this guide lag issue? Its getting worse every day now.

Well….. I sure hope this does better than the fix they did for the HDMI issue that was caused by the NXE update. (In case you missed it, that update did absolutly NOTHING! I still cannot use my HDMI!

@dive4ever
Oh, that’s all!?!!(relief) I have some super achievers on my list that could assist you. They work in long sessions, so, make sure you party chat and achievement check to make sure you’re in for the long haul – they warn you before starting. Shad is an achievement gamerscore wh**re. It’s nothing about pride, just about him being able to say “I passed the challenge, next.”

Check my friend’s list, I have quite a few people who’d help you get gamerscore, tips and such, just tell them I sent you and what game you want to play in. Oh, but keep away from dudes with “neo” in the names. If you think I talk a lot… they top me 10 fold. Enjoy.

After installing this small update the first thing I noticed was how much quicker the Mini Guide reacted and I haven’t had it freeze once yet, which it would do constantly for several seconds before this, particularly when viewing your Friends List.

We do need a new dash update. Heres my ideas.

.App Bar, Photo Party and Netflix are apps and don’t need to be hidden in other “blades”

.Starting Blade Option. Why does the console turn on to Spotlight? Let us choose.

.Friends list glitch, when someone pops online, it yanks you to their avatars little “room”

.More then 2 people Video Chats, PS3 has it and parties have several people. Same should be for Video Parties.

.Preview Premium themes. Pretty costly purchases and we cant preview them?

.Guide sometimes leaves a ghost image and also starts slow. It lags behind and it was supposed to be better…

.Video Messages? 5-10 Seconds.

.Parties crash way to often. Either people get dropper or the whole thing breaks down and everyone is left in their own empty party.

.Instead of listing every individual DLC on the Browse New Page in the marketplace, how about just showing the game. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band just drown out all other new DLC that is added.

Thats all i can think of as of this time.

How about that Spring update??

Sony released today the 2.70 firmwire update, which cointain features and fix to problemas that NOBODY WANTS/CARES/HAVE and dont fix the issues and add functionalitys that people really WANT. Ok, them I come to MajorNelson.com and I see that there’s a new System Update. I think “Oh yah, MS will shown them how to treat customers by giving them what they want/need”.. and what I see? THE SAME THAT SONY JUST DID! DONT ADDRESS COMMOM PROBLEMS THAT THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY IS HAVING NOR ADD THINGS THAT EVERYONE IS ASKING ABOUT.

Way to go Microsoft..

Yeehaw! I love updates!

This patch has made made all of my games play better.

Wow, PLEASE fix the GUIDE LAG. It gets worse every day. Why does it take FOREVER to load images of friend avatars? Why is NXE getting SLLLLLLLOWWWWWWWWWWW? Really thinking about a PS3.

dunnntadaaaadaaaaa-this secret update has just fixed nothing ,congratulations.But what it did do is download those secret recordings on your xbox for that secret built in camera that records when you yell at everybody and do illegal things.Gee thanks.I pay for the service ,i want to know every exact little detail about what gets updated or changed.Don’t be a fool,secret updates are not cool!

Was checking out ‘DLC’ and I noticed the new update is buggy.

When you’re viewing ‘All Game addons’ you click on example: O, Oblivion, then click on horse armor to get a summary of what the content includes…

When you click b to go back it errors and you have options to go everywhere except directly back to the game content you were viewing…. Smooth

Will this fix the fact that I suck at games???

Cant wait till the party chat drop outs is fixed and how the guide freezes all the time since the NXE.

anyone else get the RROD as soon as they update? This sucks!

Please, please let’s get some comment of the issue of marketplace simply not loading anything. I wish I hadn’t bought gold a year in advance now. I browse the marketplace far more than I play with people, and browsing the marketplace is nothing but a constant hourglass!

When they don’t tell you what they fixed, it’s probably piracy related.

HunCity: Nah, I got the RROD yesterday on my Falcon Pro. Not even 1 year old. Guess I didn’t miss anything with an update that “addresses interruption issues that some Xbox LIVE users may have experienced when playing a limited number of Xbox 360 games.” Whatever the hell that means, details aren’t an MS strong point.

How about fixing the LicenseMask API? After moving over to a new console but being unable to migrate content since I already did less than a year ago, every license is vetted directly against LIVE. And it’s slooooow.

And how about the Marketplace servers? Backgrounds and pictures load instantly, but it takes close to half a minute for me to get the content list. Downloading on the other hand is often quick – I’ve peaked out at about 6-7MB per second at times, which is as much as I can get with my connection (24Mbps). So downloading content is often quicker than it was to get it listed!

Infe5: When they don’t tell you what they fixed, it’s really because they’re chewing their nails thinking of what they may have broken. >:)

booooooo no new features!

its a long download

Yeah, let’s fix issues no one notices while we leave in bugs most of really care about — the slow ass guide and the “…wants to chat” spam exploit. NXE sucks by the way.

I was wondering if it was something to stop the denial of service attacks that MN posted about a few weeks ago.

Yeah, and what about the “Connection Lost” messages i’ve been getting when playing GTA 4 online, no other game does that, just good ole gta, in multiplayer ranked games. go figure, thanx Rockstar, thanx Microsoft!!

This better help with the glitchy guide button. If someone sends me a message and I try to read it, it locks up about 1/2 the time for 20-30 seconds. That is unacceptable during a game.

Would be nice is MS told us what they fixed!
Its common practice for software updates even PS3 updates have it.

damn i was hoping for primetime live.

Update went smooth for me, and thanks for informing us. I though it was a big one before I came on the blog.

Hope this fixes slow dashboard

@freshtex I only heard people saying that with slow internet connection

Major,

Since you didn’t post anything remotely telling about what connectivity issues this update fixed let me ask if it fixed mine.

I have been having major problems joining my party and MP games in COD:WaW. Did it fix that? I’d like to know before I call to organize all my friends to TRY to play another MP session where we can only get into the same room 1/10 of the time.

Thank you for your reply.

Update works great for me so far, I used to have system lock up issues with Fable 2, Orange Box, and GTA 4. So far I tried Fable 2 and the Orange box and now they run just fine, still haven’t gotten to GTA yet but I’d like to finish Fable since I can play it now without an install and deleting a bunch of stuff. Thanks for the Update, I appreciate it!

Slow dashboard, and laggy guide button is still present

For those people having hanging/lag issues with the guide, try deleting the cache. Mine was hanging up to 20 seconds. After clearing cache…was all good. Keep in mind you that you will be prompted to update game patches again when playing again for the first time after deleting cache. Note: after a while it will possibly slow down again.

Microsoft knows about the Guide lag. It is a widespread problem, and is sure to be fixed. Just relax guys and try to suffer through the lag between matches… that’s what I TRY to do

@Mastaglach820

“Party chat drop outs is due to a lack of bandwidth on a users end. Xbox Live takes games as the priority, so if said person does not have enough bandwidth to support both the game session and chat session, said user gets dropped from the chat session.”

Nice theory… but when all the people in the party are on either 20mbDL 768kbpsUL or 50mbDL 1.7mbUL it kinda doesn’t follow that it’s a user side bandwidth issue.

MetalGearFloppy,

All Xbox Live party system chats are peer to peer, and as such the ability of that party to stay intact is completley based on the amount of bandwidth available for each individual party user; and because the party system was not implemented when the Xbox 360 launched they have to implement it in a way that will not take away bandwidth in a way that would detriment game performance.

The bottleneck in this available bandwidth is most always the upload bandwidth, and 1.7Mb and 768Kbps really aren’t that much. If you’re in a multiplayer game that requires the fast upload of data to other users, in an 8-person party chat (that requires an upload channel for each individual party user) while other devices on the user’s network may be transfering data using up that 1.7Mb of upload bandwidth can occur quite quickly and if it sustains too long it may begin adversely affecting in-game performance. As a result of this, as Mastaglach820 accurately said, Xbox Live will drop you out of the party to conserve bandwidth instead of subjecting the user to any sort of in-game warping, ghosting, etc. (i.e. lag).

-litheon

@ ExcessiveGBH: Yes after a SHORT while. Cache-clearing is only a short-term fix, and it doesn’t take long at all before the Guide is lagging just as bad again. Hopefully the XBL crew is currently working on a fix for this.

an update with no feature changes – ummmmm…yay??

@ litheon …

I understand that fully… however, when those 8 people (and the “drops” also occur with less) are all just playing singleplayer games and have been around xbox live long enough to know better than to be downloading/uploading stuff on another device at the same time then, again, the arguement that it’s a bandwidth issue, falls apart surely?

Just how much bandwidth are the creators of the party system suggesting we need to run 8 way chat?
Would be interesting to know….

@litheon – if this is such a problem – then why aren’t party functions implemented through a server?

Latency on chat and voice channels is not an issue meaning that there is little point using peer-to-peer functionality for this.

I’m not adding gas to or from the “Drop players from chat”, but in my parties, usually two people are playing the same game, such as 1 vs 2 (in the chat, but in THEIR own game – Peggle), 3 vs 4 (in their own game Street Fighter IV) 5 vs 6 (in their own games – one watching movies, the other dash board) 7 (away in dashboard) 8 (me playing a lone game of peggle). And say after 35 (MACPH1ST0 help me out you were there two of the times) it just dropped everyone, one-by-one in no specific order. It was a pain, but I’ve grown used to it. When in a party while multiplayer Gears 2 and it drops everyone to their own party is when it is a pain. And at the same time, it does not happen all the time.

Funny, I did not even come here for this, I was going to ask a (lame question). In Gears of War 2, are we supposed to just press the A (green button) to run WITHOUT pressing a direction and our character automatically runs? Well, I discovered that. But are we supposed to do that.

I’m still waiting for a swapout console from the local distributor. Until then, no Live / updates for me

This should help me a lot, as I play a limited number of Xbox 360 games.

Litheon is an idiot. I have a 30 MBPS internet connection (10MBPS up), and the party chat’s still drop like crazy. Unless the bozo wants to tell me that’s not enough either. It’s got nothing to do with our internet connections, and everything to do with the incompetent engineering team at Microsoft. Ever heard of testing before release. The NXE preview program was a joke as there wasn’t enough time between it and the official release to fix a single issue.

did the update and then for a go 10 minutes my 360 sound like a jet engine then it went back to being quiet as it usually is but right before it over heats it starts sounding like a jet engine revving up and then i get two red lights, and i can’t even download anything because within a few minutes the two red lights appear, i set in an email to MS tech support waiting for their response

@Computerdude103
Hey, easy now. Are you still in party chat and your friends drop out or what? Each person is different and for you to say “…there wasn’t enough time between it and the official release to fix a single issue.” is wrong. Nexflix works perfect! My games still play. Okay Crackdown and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise save information corrupted and Fable 2 freezes. Ehh, I was mad then, but I’m over it. Bottom line it, MS will hopefully fix the issue. Whether Litheon is wrong or right he addressed the issue. I guess next update it’ll be hit with a “As-Is” sticker and no updates. Certainly would be easier. I know I complain at times, but Xbox Live is truly a technical world-wide feat.

@joshua nash
Yeh, mine did that before the NXE at times. But the strange thing that happens at times, I’ll turn my system off manually and the fans keep going. Also, I do not have anything in queue for download. Crackdown used to cause the fans to start up, but that is rare now for me.

@MetalGearFloppy,

First of all, when you or whoever are seeing these drops happening is it characterized by the victim receiving a notification that every single person in the party has left? If that is the case then that is ususually the person who actually dropped out of the party for lack of bandwidth. From my observations a party won’t cease to exist short of Xbox Live going down for maintenance, or a similar event. As far as bandwidth goes, I would assume about 20Kbps upload and download per person in a party would be required in order to sustain it sufficiently, and leave the overhead necessary for the worst case scenario of everybody talking at once.

To put it into perspective, I have a 16Mb download and 4Mb upload internet plan (with real throughoutput usually around 20Mb down and 4.5Mb up). I have QoS configured on my network so the Xbox 360 has 10Mb of download speed and 2Mb of upload speed dedicated to it at all times (mainly for streaming Netflix in HD). I never get dropped from parties, ever; and I live with 7 other people a few of who are using P2P software quite frequently during their use of the internet; so when I hear of people with massive internet connections with upwards of 10Mbps upload speed I’m usually skeptical that they are either lying about their connection speed or are doing something such as torrenting which has the potential to quickly use up all of the available NAT translations on their routing hardware and can easily fully utelize that devices’ small CPU in a matter of seconds.

@LittleBlueAlien,

Most likely because of costs, as that means there would have to be servers dedicated to facilitating party chat, which would also mean there has to be a bunch more research and development done for such a relatively straight-forward set of features.

@litheon – mostly because of costs? MOSTLY BECAUSE OF COSTS??
so explain to me friend – wtf am I paying £40 a year for exactly? – the privilege for peer-to-peer discovery?

Your opinion is no longer valid, mate.

About two hours after I did this update I got the RROD with one red light and Error code E73 (1021). I’m pissed. Thanks MS, didn’t have enough repairs in work so you had to send out a new “update” to screw more of us over?

Wow, and you guys wonder why Microsoft always keeps us in the dark, the second they say something you jump on them.

The terribly slow guide/messaging/friends that the system has had for hte last few weeks needs to go ASAP! I was terrible disappointed to find that hte new update wasn’t to address this!

One of my biggest complaints with the 360 has always been it’s laggy menus! When you’re IN A GAME, and people are potentially about to SHOOT you, you don’t want ANY lag. You want to select things, check messages, send messages, open chat, etc, INSTANTLY. The Xbox is a 3 GHz+ machine, there is no excuse for ANY lag in it’s interface other then poor design. But it’s always been quite laggy.

With NXE – this lag seemed to lessen “a bit” – not great, not even acceptable considering the speed of the hardware, but it was less.

Then for some reason a few weeks ago everything went to hell and now it’s nearly unusable. I’ve sat after trying to select a friend, or send a message, or just change any screen in the “mini guide” – for as long as 30 seconds. When you’re simply trying to check something like a text message, IN GAME, while under live fire, this is an ETERNITY. It’s ridiculous!

This needs to be fixed ASAP!

Total BS… In Australia we pay for such a laggy xbox live service…. Litheon saying chat features would eat into costs…. How about 99% of ALL PC GAMES HAVING FREE MP USING DEDICATED SERVERS??? Yet were pyaing for this lag fest riddled with adverising when I launch my xbox… yay?

Thanks. the latest update fixed the dashboard lag issues which were getting annoying.
Looks like things are running smooth again.

anyone noticed that the transition effect on pictures left and right
since the update lag sometimes

At first it would have appeared that my update had gone fine. Until today when I attempted to connect to live and I was unable to. I’ve narrowed the issue down to some bizarre networking issue. Keep in mind I have my Xbox connected over a wired connection NOT wireless. It is picking up a random 192.168.1.xxx IP along with a random 69.42.88.21 and 22 DNS server IP.

These 192 ips are now showing under my routers lan setup and the reset of my wired and wireless network is functioning normally.

I’ve tried resetting my router, my xbox, cable modem, you name it I’ve done it.

The only thing that has changed in the last 48 hours would be the the system update and since I can’t say for sure what that update included I am at a lose.

Litheon knows way more about this stuff than you guys do, so to say that he doesn’t know is just stupid. You can pay for a 30MBPS connection but it’s not always that high. It fluctuates and like he said, it’s peer to peer and everyone has to be taken into account at once. Everyone getting dropped is probably a chain reaction of the host getting dropped or something.

i hope halo 3 was one
cuz loading maps is too long

I hope they fix the Party Chat lag-out thing soon its getting irritating now. You are talking with someone and bam! they are kicked out of the party. But, when they realize it. They either think you left or kicked them. It usually happens when there is like 4-5 people in the chat. I just hope they fix it soon!

I can provide proof of my connection speed, and proof of all the party chat drops. (and if you really want I can get proof that everyone in the party has ample connection speed also). Don’t bittorrrent or download anything else, and I’m generally the only one using the connection (somebody may be browsing web on a computer but that’s it)

Litheon’s “we’re always right” attitude shows exactly why nothing gets fixed at Microsoft (and why this website is so crappy), and everything get’s released buggy. Instead of listening to our feedback, he calls us liars, and ignores the issues while contininues to develop more buggy features. This would also explain why Xbox Live (or a part of it such as the billing service, or the website) crashes at least once a month.

The unfortunate thing about this litheon guy you’re talking about is that he doesn’t work at Microsoft. Ouch. Good effort though.

Unreal, this update has made my 360 near useless. All I can do now is play arcade titles and watch movies from Netflix but I can no longer play any discs because after this update I get unreadable disc errors on every game where as before the update my games worked just fine.

Tell MS I said thanks a lot Major for ruining my 360 and I hope they are willing to pay me the 400 in change instead of me paying them for their mistakes.

Well, twiddle dee dee, guess what, the update fixed Fable 2!!!! Thanks MacPh1st0!!! And THANK YOU MICROSOFT!!!!! Awesome job, awesome!!

Unbelievable how some people talk. SkyyPlum really? I never heard anyone saying that the update ruins their xbox, maybe there’s another problem

What ever keeps the fun in place. I’m tired of playing outside. I wanna stay in and play vidya games, i tell you what.

princeworm, explain how all my discs worked before the update then? Plus, I’ve read of plenty of people having trouble after system updates for the 360 over the years and I’m not the only one having problems after this one. And after this update it sometimes takes 3 or 4 tries just to get my system on. I wouldn’t be upset if this stuff was happening before the update but it wasn’t and I have every right to be pissed off.

Since this update, every video I play through the Video Library has the info bar/video controls visible. Usually they go away after a few seconds, or when I press the Info button on the 360 remote. They don’t anymore. This happen to anyone else?

@ Litheon

When the drops happen, sometimes it’ll be everyone dropping, sometimes just a few simultaneously.
If staying connected to party chat were just down to individuals connections then these simultaneous drops wouldn’t occur would they? Otherwise it’d be one heck of a coincidence.

Also, thanks for your guess at what bandwidth is being used by the party chat function, but I’d still like some kind of official word on it.. not too much to ask, someone at microsoft must know and it can’t be super secret classified information.

I actually though you worked for microsoft, my bad, sorry, nice connection setup though.

I’m not going to go into specific details of me n my friends connection speeds/setups (it could end up looking like a “My pipe’s bigger than your pipe” situation), but suffice it to say I/we have been around gaming and “teh interwebz” long enough to know that these drops from party chat are highly unlikely to be down to our bandwidth.

This issue of party drops, along with the very poor performance of marketplace do need addressing in some kind of official manner, there’s a heck of a lot more people affected by and getting pretty annoyed by them than actually complain about them here or on various forums.

Ever since this update was realesed, i’ve got some few problems, like when i press the dashboard button, to look what my friends are doing, it sometimes freeze for 20 seconds, and returns to normal. Also, my theme dissapear when i’ve played a game.

So, Major are the problems stated here and around the net getting looked at or just brushed aside? I planned on getting Godfather II and LSL but not now since I wouldn’t even be able to play them. I’m sure gaming companies would love this trend to continue…………

God forbid MS use the $50/year towards servers! lol

FIX THE LAGGY GUIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you xboxlive team finaly i can play normally online (halo 3 works perfect now, fable 2 i will test later.

When will the laggy NXE guide be fixed??. I’m really tired of it hanging or freezing on me.

Yay for P2P technology! i pay $50dlls for a very laggy service.

When we will get the 1 vs 100 feature???….it was shown so often

For you guys complaining about a “laggy” guide (wrong terminology, slow is actually an easier word as well), try this:

1. Turn Auto Sign in off.
2. Turn the 360 off.
3. Turn it back on, signed out.
4. Clear your cache.
5. Reboot.

My guide was so unbearable slow on the NXE I was about to send my system in. Make sure you follow the steps because it does work, or at least help. Deleting the marketplace content file might help as well.

Also, is there any list of the games that were fixed, or is there no list? Does it just affect a bunch of them?

If I’m filing complaints about people or sending messages playing COD 4 / 5 it’s horrendously slow.

We shouldn’t have to use a “Hidden Feature” to make things work temporarily and as for flaunting a new feature that uses P2P technology instead of hosted.. well.. bad crack.

I’d have my old dashboard back in a flash.

Xbox Live runs like crap for me on my Comcastic 30Mb/5Mb connection. Even with my $200 gaming router, DOCSIS 3.0 modem, etc. Hurray!

The update didn’t fix the disconnection issue I was having with my friend playing RE5 co-op campaign over Live We still get disconnections without reason. The interesting thing is that the private chat that we have going doesn’t drop out when the session disconnects, so we are both still connected to Live without issue. It seems the game is buggy.