Buying The Cow
September 19th, 2009Microsoft is apparently releasing its new 802.11n wireless adapter shortly, and it’s occasion for me to complain again about the fact that wireless wasn’t built automatically into the 360. It was a little shocking for me to discover that the original 360 required a LAN connection in order to go online, because almost no one I know outside of a dorm room happens to game and wire ethernet connections in the same room (particularly if they’re renting). There was no way I was paying $100 for what even then I considered to be an essential component of a gaming console, so I’ve been bridging a laptop connection ever since.
The fact that Microsoft now feels inclined to release another adapter, which is supposedly faster, irks me further. Either the addition is practically worthless (bad), or it’s actually going to provide a more competitive experience with 360 games (worse): who wants to be forced into periodic console upgrades in order to keep a level playing field with others? This is yet another symptom of the increasing PC-ization of console gaming.
Posted in Gear, Geoff |
September 21st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I share your frustration with the lack of built in wireless but do you really think that a faster network connection is going to change the gaming experience that much? My network is 54Mbps, my internet is 1.5Mbps down and 256Kbps up it doesn’t seem like upgrading the network connection is going to have a big impact for most people when the bottleneck is their internet connection.
September 21st, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I don’t know how big a difference G to N makes, though I know that N is supposed to be a stronger connection and has greater range, which probably does impact some people.
That said, even though the internet connection is usually the bottleneck, a direct LAN connection is still typically faster because of interference, etc… Making the wireless connection faster will probably make the experience slightly, though not significantly, better… probably not enough to impact most people, but if you don’t have one yet or maybe had re-arranged your house to get an XBox within range of your modem, perhaps this will change some people’s minds.
As an aside, why NOT put your modem/router next to your game console(s), and then just use a wireless connection elsewhere in your place? This is what I’m doing currently (with wireless “g” no less) and I’m quite pleased with it. You can get Wireless USB keys for desktops for under $10 now, which is obviously a much better deal than the $100+ that MS charges for these.