Xbox noobness

[Trowalts]

So its been a while, probably about a year or two since I last posted anything on the forum. I guess gaming has taken a bit of a back seat with life, now I'm trying to rectify this dire predicament. Earlier this week I bought my first xbox (that shiny halo 4 version was just to hawt to resist).
Now I realise, I don't actually have a clue how the whole xbox live scene works and what I need to play online.

So I've had a xbox live (UK) account for about 3 years, made it on a friends xbox when we still played. I downloaded the profile to my xbox yesterday and wanted to play some halo 4 & GoW 3/2/1 online... Right forgot about you needing the whole gold account thing to play online (starts missing PC just a bit), anyway so I want to buy gold subscription but then realised my accounts location is UK, basicly should I migrate to SA account before I buy the upgrade or keep it as UK.

I've read about the Goods & Bads of SA live accounts, given its dated and I dont know how much of it is still true, however, my biggest concern is match making and latency. If I keep my UK account, will my match making for Halo & Gears default to the UK or will it be local?

Lastly, does live support groups like steam does and if it does is there a mygaming group?

 

[bradbear117]

the South African xbl is fine as it is it just doesn't have as much content as the other regions but its getting there.
Not sure about matchmaking but I know its peer to peer except for BF3(AFAIK). As a South African XBL user I have gone weeks without meeting a South African, lag has never been a great issue either, its there but nothing game breaking and I'm on a 2mb line.

No group support like steam. Just a regular friends list.

 

[matt]

Don't worry about not getting the Gold subs, if and when you decide to migrate, your Gold subscription comes with you. I think that the only real issue with migrating is that you can't re-download stuff you bought from the marketplace before you migrated.