User interface: 9 / 10
Once you open your Xbox 360 and connect it to your broadband service, you will find that setup is a breeze. It is recommended that you setup an account at xbox.com and link it to your .net passport.

Whenever you go to create an XBL account, all you need to do is give the machine your .net passport and it will finish the setup for you. Once setup, you will find clear tags on the dashboard for all the functions of Live. You can easily find XBL arcade or even find downloadable content for your games with the mere push of a button. Xbox Live couldn’t be easier to navigate.


Pricing: 7 / 10
XBL is a full-on dedicated gaming service along the same lines as other premium services, such as HBO and AOL. With the service, you get full-fledged skill-based matchmaking designed to enhance your fun. You also get a detailed feedback service that enables you to make sure that certain types of people do or don’t get into your matches, and of course great customer support.

Price schemes run at around $8 a month or $50 a year. You can argue that it may be expensive, but the ease of use, options, and community support involved has taken considerable amounts of time and resources to develop. Therefore it is mandatory that in order to keep the service running, compensation must be met.


Functionality: 8 / 10
The games that support XBL all generally go by the same scheme. You have player match, ranked match, and custom match. Each gives you a different kind of experience.

Player match lets you search for matches that you have predetermined the parameters for and they aren’t ranked.

Ranked matches generally have their parameters picked for you and you are sent into matchmaking to find suitable opponents. The level of play in this service is usually higher, as your record is at stake.

Custom matches involve the player creating their own lobbies to invite friends into and allow random people should they so desire. These matches fall under the scheme of player matches and are geared towards fun rather then competition.

The only blemish to the service's functionality is the occasional game that is released with glitchy coding.


Overall: 9 / 10
XBL is a premium service in the purest sense of the word. For your money you get many services including matchmaking, feedback control, and voice chat over up to four lines. Many argue that they don’t want to pay to play online, but free services pale in quality and functionality to XBL. In my opinion, XBL is a stroke of online engineering genius and is something that truly has to be experienced to be understood.