Orange Box 360 patched

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 October, 2007

TF2 performance tweaks.

The Orange Box on Xbox 360 is definitely amazing, but Team Fortress 2 players have also been complaining of amazing lag, so Valve has released an update that it reckons fixes it.

Chief amongst the TF2 enhancements in the new patch are reductions in network bandwidth usage, improvements to overall game performance, and adjustments to the search facility so ranked games are found with greater ease and results are set to favour preferred host conditions.

You should find yourself downloading it next time you fire up the game, thanks to Xbox Live's mum-when-you're-ill ability to know exactly what you need.

For more on the various delights of The Orange Box, why not read our Orange Box, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 reviews? They won't bite.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Xerx3s #1 4 years ago

    If this was yesterdays patch, it didn't do it that much good. It struggles to do with 6 players what other games easily do with 16+ players.

  • p00ntang #2 4 years ago

    Same here. I'm not playing it until it's fixed

  • speedjack #3 4 years ago

    Yup - was online yesterday and it was still laggy and lost connection to host.

  • Tiger_Walts #4 4 years ago

    I was in a few 16 player games yesterday and I wasn't experiencing the terrible lag that I was getting in 4 player games before the patch.

    There were a few moments of latency but it never went over 200ms from my observations, and this was playing with Americans too.

    Maybe your host was a bit shite for that game you played?

  • Venatio Verified Expo Community & Gaming Manager, Eurogamer Network #5 4 years ago

    It's still very hit and miss. Games that are listed as good connections when you search can still be plagued with lag.

  • Xerx3s #6 4 years ago

    The OB in general is imo rubbish. I bought it for this and portal. Portal is short and to get good value for money this had to extend it but it's completely unplayable most of the time. It also just seems to lack the most basic of basic XBL things such as parties.

  • Artemis_Matsas #7 4 years ago

    If all these problems you guys report are true, then why the reviews had no mention of them?

  • bodypopper #8 4 years ago

    Tried playing on several servers yesterday after patching it and the lag was worse than before. They should have waited and finished the game properly then released it alongside the PS3 version. Grrr.
    Artemis - most reviews were written before the game could be tested on Xbox Live!
    Edited by 1 at 29/10/07 @ 10:07

  • Darren #9 4 years ago

    Have they managed to add AA yet? ;)

  • BBIAJ #10 4 years ago

    I played a game of TF2 when this launched and had no lag issues what-so-ever.

  • christourlord #11 4 years ago

    It's absolutely fine for me now. I played TF2 for hours yesterday with no noticeable lag at all.

  • Kill_Crazy #12 4 years ago

    Aren't you glad you pay for a better service with Live?

  • Mr-Brett #13 4 years ago

    I played Team Fortress 2 after downloading this patch yesterday and was in a game for a minute before getting randomly chucked out and then it wouldn't let me join any games.

    Definitely fixed ;)

  • driptray #14 4 years ago


    Bots! That would be really good. They should talk to the Shadowrun folks; their bots ROCK!!!!

  • Xerx3s #15 4 years ago

    Well, in their defence, the last couple of games where laggy but playable.

  • bioreit #16 4 years ago

    @ Xerx3s

    Downloaded the patch last night, but crashed out on the sofa before firing it up and seeing what difference has been made.

    Will be on tonight though and might host a game and invite you - try and get a full match maybe, and see if the lag goes?

    Will have to threaten my housemates with removal of Internet priviliges if they try and bit torrent anything, though...

  • speedjack #17 4 years ago

    Kill_Crazy

    Lag has little to do with XBL and everything to do with netcode, hence the reason the software was patched.

    ...and yes, I am glad I pay pay for XBL, thanks for asking !

  • GamesConnoisseur #18 4 years ago

    In my defence only played TF2 a total of 5 or 6 times since launch, only encountered slight lags on couple of times and rest was smooth enough. I hope the patch would improve the game and prevent lags.

    However does this patch prevent odd freezings of Single Player games? I encountered few of the freezes and reboots in Portal, HL2 and Episodes.

    /Hoping its not just me!

  • ducksmuggler #19 4 years ago

    my advise sell your 360 get a ps3 after 4 years of xbox live iv had enough with this shite ...... time for a change

  • kangarootoo #20 4 years ago

    Will people stop going on about Live. It is irrelevant to the subject at hand.

    XBLive does not program games, dullards.

  • Kill_Crazy #21 4 years ago

    Speedjack wrote:
    "Kill_Crazy

    Lag has little to do with XBL and everything to do with netcode, hence the reason the software was patched.

    ...and yes, I am glad I pay pay for XBL, thanks for asking !"

    /strikes

    Yessssssssssss! I've hooked one. 'Tis only a tiddler though :(

    /throws speedjack back and recasts.

  • neosalad #22 4 years ago

    i only had a few games of this a few nigths ago. wasnt to bad LAG wise but i did notice a little.... , i wasnt too sure of what i was doing in the game though, LOL.

    Will be interesting to see if i notice any improvements ..

  • neilqpr #23 4 years ago

    Patch worked for me. Pre-patch even if there was one American in the game it would lag like hell. Last night I was playing 8v8 with Americans only and not a sign of any lag.

  • smelly #24 4 years ago

    *sigh*

    It's a sad day indeed when console games get rushed out and (in effect) get launch day patches (albeit a couple of weeks later).

    That's the sort of thing i started not playing pc games because of.

    Got fed up buying a game only to instantaneously need to patch the thing.

    Bah! Console games should work out of the box IMHO without any need of patching, etc etc.

    I'm not against downloading extra levels, etc. But patches i am.

  • Daikon #25 4 years ago

    Bah, humbug! Patches are for sissies. Be happy you have something to play with.

    When I was a lad we were happy if a game properly loaded.
    If it didn't we'd rewind the tape and wait another twelve minutes for it to load, staring at the flickering screen in anticipation.
    And if it didn't run we'd rewind and try again.
    And again until it did.

    And we never complained.

  • bioreit #26 4 years ago

    @ Daikon

    Ta for dredging up all the old memories of trying to get Atic Atac working on Staurday afternoons. I was so ridiculously delirious when we got our C64 and Last Ninja Remix on cartridge - I'd load and re-load that damn game just because I could!

    @ Smelly

    I think you'll find that testing environments, even ones using testers over the Internet, are a completely different kettle of fish to releasing a product worldwide. The manifold problems discovered are often a complete shock and surprise to many.

    All I can say is kudos to Valve for getting the patch out so darn quick.

    Works nicely too - played an 8 v 8 for three hours last night. Lagged for maybe 20 seconds the whole time. Good stuff.

    But maybe Smelly would rather not get launch day/two-week patches and instead wait a few months for companies to pull their finger out and then sort out the problems they could not possibly have forseen and fixed prior to release?

    ;-)

    Edit 1All work and no play makes bioreit an illiteret moran.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/07 @ 09:11

  • cobracotton #27 4 years ago

    I haven't had any problems with Lag on this, I've had two patches come down, and enjoy playing TF2 very much, congrats to Valve

    @ Smelly IMho this is what you sound like to me "I won't patch, I won't, I won't, I won't" or in other words a spoilt little girl. Have you ever heard of cutting your nose off to spite your face, look it up theres a picture of you next to the definition in the dictionary and I drew a comedy cock on your head too.

    x

  • christbait #28 4 years ago

    The lag is still there... only really seems to happen when playing long distance players, if I'm playing with people in the UK, it's fine, but it's been ok for the past 5 days, before that it was absolutely diabolical, never experienced such terrible lag to the point where my character was just twitching in one spot and not going anywhere or doing anything.