Attention Nigerian Gamers: Setting Up Your XboxLive/PSN Account.

The Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 have revolutionized the high definition, high graphics video games we enjoy today. A lot of thought has gone into, and still goes into making both products as addictive and entertaining as possible. These video games are a ton of fun on their own, but the full ‘potential’ of these consoles may be felt, nay, can only be felt, when combined with their respective online features. I’m talking about the XboxLive for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation Network (PSN) for the Sony PlayStation.

While this may not be news to many gamers worldwide, from my personal experience and interactions, I find that it is news to many gamers in some African countries, Nigeria included. I’ve met quite a number of enthusiastic gamers who would want to take the Xbox and PlayStation experience to the next level, but are bedevilled with poor internet connections as well as a ‘scarcity’ of internet service providers who give you the option of setting up a wi-fi in your home, through which your console may be connected to the internet.

Today, we at TechCity will give you a simple tip on how you can use a ‘fast’ modem to connect your Xbox 360 and your PlayStation 3 to the internet, to experience that complete gamer feeling. But just before we do that, we’d like to point out that setting up your online profile would depend on the console you’re using, for instance, you have to pay about NGN1000 per month for the XboxLive, or opt for the free PlayStation Network. There have been endless debates on which is better, some arguing that whatever is paid for is often better than whatever is free; others arguing that there is no justification for buying a console and still paying for its online feature. Irrespective of what network you choose, the XboxLive or the PlayStation Network, connecting it to the internet is our top priority at TechCity.

So enough with the ‘what’ and ‘why’, lets move on to the ‘how’. How do you connect your console to the internet without using wi-fi? You’d need a few things. Certainly the most important component will be a fast and reliable internet connection. In Nigeria, there are a number of internet service providers who are pretty reliable. Swift broadband is certainly the fastest in Lagos (in our opinion anyway), MTN and GLO could be relatively fast, depending on what part of the country you are, and then there are the likes of Starcoms, multilinks and so on. Personally, I use an Etisalat modem in Abuja and I play online games without a single ‘lag’. In general, you have the responsibility of choosing a modem that wont disappoint you or frustrate your online sessions.

Next, you’d need an ethernet cable. We’d recommend one about 300 cm or more in length. Basically, just get a fairly long one. The rest is easy. What you need to do install your modem and then connect your laptop or pc to the internet. Once this is done, make sure to ‘share’ your internet connection. To do this, just follow the following quick and easy steps.

At the bottom right of the task bar, you should see an icon indicating that your pc is currently connected to the internet. Click this.
Next, right click the active connection and click ‘Properties’.
A dialogue box will pop up, and you should see a ‘Sharing’ tab. Click the ‘Sharing’ tab.
Next, make sure the ‘Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection’ is ticked.
Then click OK.
Next you plug in an ethernet (LAN) cable, one end going into your laptop/PC and the other end going into your console.
Switch on the console and it should be connected to the internet.
**Do note that sometimes, you will need to connect to the internet again from the console, but this shouldn’t be difficult. You just need to go to the ‘settings’ on your console and click ‘test connection’.

Follow the above steps, and you can say a big hello to the addictive world of online gaming. At this point, I can guess some of you are wondering how much data playing online takes. Well the good news is that it doesn’t take much. Of course, occasionally you might need to download console updates of about 25MB or squad updates of 4MB (for all the FIFA 13 addicts). Other than that, playing online could take about 10-30MB per hour, depending on what you’re doing. Hence, if you have a 3GB, 5GB or 8GB data restriction, you’re very much protected. It is advisable to monitor your data balance often just so you know how much data your online sessions take up.