Elvis has left the building.

3 Aug 06

Don't worry. I'm going to start the story in a little bit. I wanted to get a few more Xbox 360 notes on the record first. I'm separating these so people who are only interested in the story won't get bogged down or confused.

I left off trying to get my NAT condition to read 'open' on the Xbox 360. I'm happy to report I succeeded. No one source provided all the steps I needed to complete to the process. By playing mix and match, I was able to open it up.

First, for anyone interested, I have a Linksys WRT54GS router. That is listed as a compatible router for Xbox Live. To get it to work, I had to set up the Xbox 360 with a static IP. I had to forward ports 88 and 3074 to it. I had to turn off UPnP on the router. I had to uncheck the Block Anonymous Internet Requests under security. Then the NAT reported as open. In all that I had upgraded to the latest firmware as well.

Microsoft needs to consider this problem carefully. For one thing, they're holding up 360 gaming as the goal for Windows Gaming (see the official magazine). Simple, transparent and easy to play are the buzz words. Well, this is a problem that is negatively affecting many Live users. From the message boards I've read, few understand it. Many don't feel confident enough to solve the problem. Then there are those of us who want to solve the problem, but are having a tough time finding accurate information.

If it had only a minimal effect on your gaming, it wouldn't matter. However, it determines who you can play against (and with). It can affect your lag, voice chat quality and number of drops. Yet the Xbox site's advice is to use a compatible router.

I should also point out that after finally getting it open, the next time I turned on my main computer, I couldn't connect to the internet. I had to shut down everything up to the cable modem and sequentially start up to solve that problem (after lesser troubleshooting efforts had failed). That's a whole lot of hassle.

I'm getting slightly better at Hyper Fighting. The default difficulty is only three out of seven stars. Great.

I tried out the Saint's Row demo on the 360. It really feels like Grand Theft Auto with tighter controls and better graphics. That will probably move a lot of units. None of it felt fresh or inspired. I'll be looking at the reviews.

Jason