xbox live, worth it still? (aka birthday present)

[dcescott]

5/28 I turn 34 and I'm thinking of getting xbox live ( I know I'm a little late) I don't own a 360, don't want one. I own Time Splitters Future Perfect
Burnout 3
and a couple of other online games.
I am a casual gamer, because I have a family and a job plus freelance work, yard work and so on. But there is those days where I do have time to sit down and chill. I play Mario Kart DS online frequently, enjoy it a lot, except for the pissed off drop offs.
Your opinions and is there a community there still since the new 360 was released?
I have never played online before, like a deathmatch. I am not interested in Halo 2 because my nephew sniped me to death one day. No fun. Of course with Time Splitters I was evenly match with him.

[Darren870]

hard to say with those games. Since they are older the servers may be empty at times.

Its worth but you have to play up to date games or really popular old ones (halo 2). Otherwise the servers can be empty.

Then again I play the first unreal everynow and then and that game came out a few years ago. Only 1-2 games up at a time though.

[dcescott]

servers? is there a calendar or servers that are busy? This is all new to me.. Pardon my ignorance!

[Slimedog]

The problem is that on a lot of older games, there just aren't any other people looking to play at a given time. I had a lot of fun on XBox Live with Mechassault and Crimson Skies, but who knows if anybody is playing them anymore. I never could find somebody to play Magic: Battlegrounds with and I spent a half hour waiting to get a game of SNK vs Capcom 2.

Actually, I'm a pretty casual online gamer and its pretty infrequent that I ever do the deathmatch thing. That being said, the online component of the 360 sucked me in in a way I never expected. Between the download content, simple fun Xbox Arcade titles, leaderboards on everything and Achivements, I really really love going online on my 360. I guess what I'm saying is look at the 360 little closer before ruling it out.

At any rate, to answer your question, I don't think a regular Xbox Live subscription would really be a good investment right now. Microsoft seems to be doing their best to put all things Xbox behind them and concentrate on the 360. Unless you are seriously into one of their major hits (Halo 2 or Splinter Cell: CT) you probably will spend more time waiting than playing. If you do decide to get a subscription, go ahead and download all the extra (free) content for every game you own before they decide to pull the servers.

[dcescott]

bummer.
I thought I had a winner.
Thanks man for the info.
Daniel