Burning Questions

Throughout my travails on Xbox Live™, I constantly run into gamers either ill-tempered or curious about a delay or feature that has them frustrated or perplexed. Some questions are far more common than others and in this column I'll address several of the hot button issues I've routinely come across.

Most popular demo to date? Probably.

What is With Demos Being Late?
Typically, the answer is perception. A gamer will see a report from a website or a quote from a developer speaking to when they "expect" a game will arrive on Xbox Live Marketplace and then grab hold of that date as established fact. The problem here is that developers and reporters are really only guestimating, since Microsoft doesn't release confirmed dates for game demos.

A developer may be done with a demo, but then Microsoft has to put it through a rigorous certification and testing process before finding its way onto Xbox Live Marketplace. If it fails, if there are questions, or if there's just a lot of content to look at, apparent "delays" can transpire. What's the moral of the story? Take those purported release dates with a grain of salt and read them as starting dates, not street dates.

First, Gamerscore isn't strictly a competition,
even if you want it to be.

Why Did My Xbox 360 Turn Off?
I've heard this more than a few times, and I can only imagine the frustration some of you have experienced. You walk away from The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion without saving, thinking, hey, the console's still on, I'll save it when I get back. But if you enabled the Auto-Off feature when you first set up your Xbox 360®, your console will power down after six hours of non-use. Even if your game of Oblivion is still running. Even if that then makes you cry like a little girl. The Auto-Off feature is in the System menu under Console Settings if you don't want this to happen to you. Again.

You mean I have to fight him again !?

Why Should I Get a MU When I Can Recover My Profile?
I've heard this a couple of times, and while it may not be the most burning issue, it is vital that you don't Recover your Gamertag on a friend's Xbox 360. If you do, you run the risk of losing the save game files on your own Xbox 360 and screwing up your achievements since you'll have outdated the profile on your console.

Where the Heck is Street Fighter 2 on XBLA?
This relates to the first question, but begs a response all its own. Initially, reports had Street Fighter® II: Hyper Fighting launching on Xbox Live back in March, then April, then May, and now it's June and the classic is still a no show.

Whatever the complete answer is, we can at least say that it's been receiving some fine tuning in the network play department. No one wants this Xbox Live Arcade killer-app to get bogged down in lag, so just stay patient and know that when it does arrive, you'll be ready to rock and roll, and won't have to deal with delays once you get this game you so correctly crave and richly deserve.

Achievements so hard your mom will cry.

Why Can't Some of my Friend's Join My Room?
While this isn't a product support page, I've run into this question several times and even had to deal with it myself. If the NAT settings for your connection are set to Strict or Moderate, that's probably the source of your problem. Take a look at your router settings to see if you can increase your NAT settings to Open or the equivalent to avoid problems connecting to lobbies or not being able to hear other players.

Why Do Some of My Pictures Show Up Under Themes and Others Don't?
Using a personal picture as your dashboard background is a fine feature, but there still seems to be some confusion as to how to get it to work. You must go to the Media menu on your dashboard, select Pictures, highlight the picture you want and press X to Apply as Background. Then, and only then, will that picture show up as an option when you look at your Themes under Personal Settings.

Why Are Some Game's Achievements Easy and Others Impossible?
This is both a matter of misperception and a case of it being early in the lifecycle for Xbox 360. First, Gamerscore isn't strictly a competition, even if you want it to be. While it's fun to compare overall scores with buddies, it simply isn't meant to be a reflection of your "skill" as a gamer, so just relax. Secondly, the system is still new and Microsoft is still educating developers on how best to use it. The days of five-to-ten achievements netting you a thousand Gamerscore after a few hours of play are likely all but over. Sorry. So you'd better snatch up those points while they're still out there to be had.

Hopefully this gets a few of those frequency asked (or screamed) questions out of the way. I'll keep my ears open for any more issues that lots of you are dealing with, and we'll help you stay on top of them.

Article by Ryan Treit