At launch they had a ”low bit rate codec” and they’ve stuck with it, but it’s just not good enough today. Xbox Live will ”move on” with better quality.
”The codec we used when we first launched was a low bit rate codec and we stuck with that,” said Xbox Live Studios’ Johnson at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. The Fall dashboard update for Kinect has a redesigned system for handling voice communication.
”We launched and we said we required broadband. We required a 64k connection, which not many people think of as broadband any longer. But that was the minimum requirement to run the service at the time.” You can get 512K broadband in the UK cheap with 50MB on offer from some providers.
”It’s time for us to move on. Especially if we want to think about broadening - a crackly headset on the top of your head – not what people think of when they talk about popular entertainment,” continued the boss.
Headset sound quality has long been an issue for competitive gamers on Xbox Live as it’s just plain terrible. Even if you got a top quality headset it would only improve it so much because of the low bit rate codec used by Microsoft. Do you game and chat?
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