Xbox Join Party & Game, Video Kinect: “Could not connect. Please try again later.”

I’ve bought Live Gold membership for my brother and myself so we can play together online and do Video Kinect chats, instead of using Skype.

Unfortunately we spent a whole Sunday trying to make it work unsuccessfully. I posted a question on the Xbox Support site but only one guy replied saying that I have to re-install Video Kinect. He wrote the same answer to everyone who posted similar questions and some even tried it out but that didn’t make it work so I didn’t even bother.

Next I’ve searched on the web and discovered that this is actually a common problem. I decided to try out a suggestion everyone has been writing about, which finally fixed the problem:

1. On your PC: Open a browser window and type in your router’s address.
2. On your PC in the router settings: Search for the setting “Enable UPnP” and make sure it’s checked. It’s under “Advanced Network” but it may differ depending on the router. This setting is usually enabled by default but it’s better to double-check it nevertheless.
3. On Xbox: Go to System Settings => Network => Configure Network and write down the IP Address your console is using to connect to internet. You’ll need it at step 4.
4. On your PC: In the browser window where you opened your router settings, search for a menu called “Port forwarding” and add the following ports: 53, 80, 88, 1863 and 3074. These ports are used by the Xbox so we have to make sure that we give access to it. Also in the field IP Address, type in the IP Address of the Xbox which you wrote down at step 3.

Note: visit Port Forward if you have trouble at step 4. This website is a step by step guide on how to setup port forwarding for each router type.

We did the above on my brother’s side and Party Play and Video Kinect worked afterwards. It didn’t work with only UPnP enabled, we had to specifically add these ports too. But it really depends on the router as well, I have a Fritz Box and the port 3074 was automatically added and it works without having to adjust any settings.

Important to remember is that if you have to restart your router for some reason, the IP adress will be reset so the Xbox will get a new IP address. In this case, you have to check the new IP address (step 3) and edit the IP address which you entered at step 4. Another solution is to simply select on the Xbox at System Settings => Network => Configure Network that you want to manually set an IP address for your Xbox. This way even if your router will be reset, the Xbox will always have the same IP address so you don’t need to update it every time.