WHEN THE Xbox 360 is updated this Autumn it appears that its sound quality will be much better.

The refresh, which includes the Kinect controller, will upgrade the codec and audio infrastructure that underpin the quality of voice communications between two Xbox 360s.

Xbox Live Studios boss Jerry Johnson told Eurogamer at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that the Vole had used a low bit rate codec when the Xbox first launched and had stuck with that.

Part of the reason was that it came out in the early days of broadband when a 64kbps connection was still a lot faster than dial-up. No one thinks of this as broadband these days but it was the minimum requirement to run the service at the time.

Microsoft introduced voice communications to the original Xbox with the November 2002 launch of Xbox Live. But the sound quality made wax cylinders seem like hi-fi and gamers have been moaning. Some even connect through Skype instead. µ