Xbox Live, no gamer left behind

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I was fortunate enough about 3 years ago to work for the Xbox Live team, where I was a hired gun to work with Telco and router (home gateway) manufacturers to make sure their stuff worked with Xbox Live when we launched the Live service.  Me and my good fiend Jim Barber (now an Xbox Live Program Manager) split up the work so that he took on the Telco's and I developed a router testing program.

My job was to work with the most popular home gateway manufacturers to ensure that their implementation of NAT worked well with Xbox Live.  The developers at Xbox Live created some tools that let us simulate peer to peer games, UPNP, and IP simulations such as Port Unreachable commands.  We also do 24 hour traffic tests to make sure that gateways don’t flip ports, etc.  We built a lab that keeps growing, but has about 200 of the most popular routers in the US.  We also expanded into other geographies as the Xbox Live service launched in those markets.  The results of the work we did there is an Xbox Live Compatible Logo program, which you can check out at the Xbox Connectivity web site.  I highly recommend that anyone buying a home gateway, regardless if you have Xbox Live make sure that your router passes our tests.

Jim moved out of consulting and is now with Xbox Live, continuing the work that we started and taking it to the next level with the launch of Xbox 360.  Jim’s is usually overloaded with things to do, especially because the culture at Xbox Live is “no one gets left behind”.  The mentality there is, if you have an Xbox Compatible gateway and you are using an Xbox Live Compatible provider, it should work out of the box.  I have been in meetings were we have a 12 year old kid in Nowhere, Illinois having problems playing with his buddies on Xbox Live Compatible gear and lines, and we actually call him directly to troubleshoot or have the provider roll a truck.

BTW, when I talked to Jim this week he had to move to another room to talk because the fans in his latest Xbox 360 sounded like Jet Engines.  He assured me the consumer models will be MUCH quieter.

I think that everyone at Xbox and Xbox Live are some of the most passionate people at Microsoft, and I can’t wait to see what they do with Xbox 360.