Online gaming questions. Need advice.

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zr1chris

zr1chris

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zr1chris
Ok so I was at the mall and had to stop and look at the Galaxy Note II. Now my question is with it's hot spot capability, how feasible is it for gaming on the PS3 and/or xbox?

What kind of data plan would I need?

I'm gaming on average of 2 hours per day (estimate on the really high side). How much data usage would I need on my plan? Is 10GB enough? 12GB?
 
Wow. Still nothing?

Iv'e gotten like 10 posts of feedback on FP.net and this community is like 10 times the size. I surely expected the opposite. :lol:
 
Ask a mod to move your thread to the computers and tech section, you'll probably get responses there. This forum is more concerned with games themselves.

For what it's worth I'd suggest a more robust option than a personal hotspot on a phone, but it might work out I guess. No idea what sort of data plan you'd need though.
 
It is more practical on the 360 with the Smartglass tech that they are going to implement in the future, if they haven't already.

As for your service, I would recommend Sprint since they can handle heavy data usage without charging you out the wazoo like ATT or choking your data like T-Mobile. Besides if you have a wifi available at your house, just hitch your phone to the signal and instant free data without worrying about charges.
 
Well I do have Comcast home internet but I was looking to get rid of it (which will save me $50 per month) if I can get the phone's hotspot to serve for my online gaming needs. Looking at a 12GB plan from Verizon for $110 per month. Comcast says ive used 10GB each of the last 3 months.
 
I personally think latency/bandwidth would be much more of a factor than cellular data usage. Online games usually don't use much data (typically 10-30MB/hour afaik, depending on the type of game) but are highly dependent on low latencies, so you'd want a fast, reliable plan ahead of a slower one with a large data cap.
 
A few years ago I used to play online PC games with a mobile broadband thing. It was on the 3 network over here and I got 3GB for £15 pound a month. It was horrible the best ping I could get was about 150ms (usually over 200) and it dropped all the time. But when i moved to cable broadband my first package was 10GB a month and i played A LOT of bad company 2 on my PS3 and never went over. So to summarize 10GB is plenty enough but the pings are going to make it tricky.
 
It is the 4G LTE service from Verizon that im looking into. Not sure how that would be on latency
 
zr1chris
Well I do have Comcast home internet but I was looking to get rid of it (which will save me $50 per month) if I can get the phone's hotspot to serve for my online gaming needs. Looking at a 12GB plan from Verizon for $110 per month. Comcast says ive used 10GB each of the last 3 months.
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I'm not sure about Comcast, but some ISPs do cap your bandwidth like Time Warner. I use charter and I don't have to worry about such things. Sure, I pay more in costs, but when there is a speed upgrade available, I jump right on it for little to no cost. Right now, my speeds are 30 Mbps, which is more than enough for my PS3 to play lag free online even outside the house via wifi.

The point is that it may be time to change your ISP, NOT experiment with mobile gaming which has proven unreliable with consoles.
 
zr1chris
It is the 4G LTE service from Verizon that im looking into. Not sure how that would be on latency
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That should run most games fine I'd think. It should run around 20mbps or so, with some areas maxing out at 40, so it's pretty much on par with standard cable modem speeds. But it's extremely location dependent, do you know if your area has good 4G coverage?
 
Wardez
That should run most games fine I'd think. It should run around 20mbps or so, with some areas maxing out at 40, so it's pretty much on par with standard cable modem speeds. But it's extremely location dependent, do you know if your area has good 4G coverage?
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The 20-40 mbps really doesn't matter that much for gaming. 3mbps is plenty. It's the ping that he has to worry about. If he has 500mbps it won't matter if his ping is always high. I have time warner and get around 25mbps and have a friend that has horizon fiber and he only gets a max of 5mbps. He though does run into much less lag then I do because his ping is super low all the time, and we usually ahve him be the host when we play games.

I played around with 4G LTE once on an ipad and the lowest I seen the ping was around 50 or so. That would be plenty fast enough for gaming, but this was in an area where I was getting a max signal.
 
Yeah ping is important, but it also changes from server to server, it's not too much different actually, again, depending on where you're located.
 
Wardez
That should run most games fine I'd think. It should run around 20mbps or so, with some areas maxing out at 40, so it's pretty much on par with standard cable modem speeds. But it's extremely location dependent, do you know if your area has good 4G coverage?
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Yeah I know this area does. Not sure about the actual strenth of the signal though. Looks like I may just have to get it and wear out their 30 day money back guarantee. If it don't work well then i'll just bring it back.
 
I was in an LTE area today and ran a speed test. I got 70ms ping which should be decent enough for gaming and 12 mb up and down. That was on AT&T. Verizon is suppose to have a faster 4G netwrok so you could be better then what my tests were.

70ms would be the biggest worry, but 70ms is really not that bad. My cable gets between 15 and 30 most of the time and that is about as good as you can ask for. Once you start getting a ping over 100 you will probably start getting some lag. Like I said before it's not the download speed that really matters at all. 2 or 3 MB is plenty it's the ping that might give you a problem. My son played transformers online here when we ran a 3G test to see how well it would work, and it was fine as long as the ping stayed around 100. If it got any higher over that then it would lag really bad, but the download speed was always around 1.5 which was fine. It was the ping going up and down that was making it hard for him.

You should be good though. If you do give it a try please let us know how well it works. I was looking at a house recently and the only internet offered is cellular. No cable or DSL and I am also wondering the same thing you are about how well gaming will work with 4G.
 
Well I went to Verizon and it seems there are a bunch of hidden fees that the website doesn't show me so I think this is going to be a no go for me.

Thanks for all the help guys! :cheers:
 

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