LANCOZA Blog

As it turns out, the majority of my friends list are in hiding from the Live Ban-Police . If you play on Live occasionally, have a preference for first person shooters and like killing zombies then look me up. My Live tag is Hotshot es

Microsoft has started a wave of bannings on Xbox Live. The only reason given is for a violation of their Terms of Use .

There is alot of speculation about the timing and reasoning behind the bans, but from what I can tell if you have done a firmware mod to your Xbox, then you are a likely candidate. So far I know of 2 locals who have been banned, both have firmware modded Xbox's.

I had some free time this weekend and wanted kill some Zombies but no one in my friends list was online. I tried to join a random game in Call of Duty and Gears 2 but I could not find a single gane.

In my desperation I fired up the demo of Battlefield 1943 and ran around aimlessly with eight other deperate souls for a few mintes before I threw in the towel. All in all a very sad night on Live. My goal now is to expand my friend list quite dramatically beyond 'real' friends and to focus on finding 'cyber' friends. I mostly play Call of Duty and Gears 2, I also don't have any of the addon map packs, so I think that the prospective pool is quite limited.

It looks like Tycho from Penny Arcade was right when he said that the PC-gamer demographic is not the core segment of the video game market. The latest news from Infinity Ward is that the PC multi-player mode has been reduced to 18 players from 32 in the original game.

Added to the fact that there will be no dedicated game servers, it really looks like the twilight of PC gaming as a platform distinct from console gaming. Is this a good thing? I have long since stopped using my PC as a  gaming platform. My 360 is currently the only platform that I game on if you discount my dusty PSP. With the convenient, multiplayer games afforded by Live, I really don't miss anything about PC gaming, especially the routine hardware upgrades that gaming PCs required. I will accept the 'degraded' controls and graphics in favour of a more accessible gaming experience.

But why does it feel like a part of me died...

I checked the usage of my free 10GB trial account from WebAfrica recently and realised that I had only used 300MB. Because the trial was scheduled to end at the end of October, I decided to go on a weekend downloading spree.

I logged into Live and downloaded as many Arcade games as I could. I was even tempted to download themes and anything else that I could get my hands on. Even the Call of Duty map packs were starting to look attractive but the fact that I had to buy points and then login to a VPN turned me off that idea.

As I was gorging myself on downloads I realised that 10GB of International bandwidth is alot even if you download 500MB Live games. WebAfrica mentioned on their forum that their new product offerings will be available early next year. I am keen to see what changes they will make to their pricing.

Well it depends on who you believe really. A source from BT Games mentioned that we would have Live 'sometime next year'. But he did not have any firm date or other proof to back up his claim.

Microsoft did respond to complaints about the lack of Live in SA. You can read the full interview here. It may have been a PR exercise on their part to reduce the number and volume of complaints. The one useful thing to come out of the interview is that bandwidth is not the obstacle keeping Live out of SA.

When we will have local Live servers is really anyone's guess. At the moment it is probably easier to get your UK/US Live subscription and points here  or here and not stress too much about something that is completely out of your control.

I finally got my Gold Live Subscription which means that I no longer have to create serial online personalities. The plan on Saturday was to kill zombies in Call of Duty but by the time I was online everyone else was headed to bed.

I decided to dive into the great unknown and join a random game. It seems no matter how random the selection, I always end up playing with 12 year olds from the UK or US, the mute button served me well.

I normally play online with maximum swearing and shouting so it was a weird sensation to play zombies, which requires a great deal of co-operation, without any communication at all. Regardless of how many rounds we played, we could not get past level 12. If anyone knows the secret to progressing further, please do let me know.

If you are a fan of the House television series as well as zombie -killing games, then you will like this picture .  And yes, zombie-killing is a newly created gaming sub-genre.

In other Zombie related news, Left 4 dead DLC dropped on Tuesday, bit late I know, but  with our incredible VPN connections to Live, it would have taken you a few days to download anyway.

In holiday bundle news, Microsoft has two new bundles coming out in time for the festive season. An Elite bundled with Pure and Lego Batman for $299 USD. There is also a controller bundled with Geometry Wars 2, Lumines Live!, Bomberman Live and Ms. Pac-Man for $59.99 USD. No word yet if these bundles will be making their way down south.

WebAfrica is starting a trial of a new service which sounds very promising. They have become a Tier 1 ISP and plan on passing along savings to us long suffering bandwidth consumers. I have already signed up for the trial which starts in about a month. With 10GB of free banwidth on offer, how could I say no? Perhaps this is the start of the long awaited bandwidth price reductions that were promised by the arrival of the SEACOM cable .

Following hot on the heels of Sony's announcement of the PS 3 Slim, Microsoft announced a price cut for the Xbox, now there are rumours floating about around an Elite with a 250GB hard drive. The scary part about an Xbox with a 250GB hard drive is how much it will cost as a stand alone considering that the 120GB drive retails for R1500. With the cost of international bandwidth, there is very little chance that us locals can fill a 120GB drive let alone a 250GB one with Live content.