XBOX Live Account Question

[SiliconJon]

I have yet to find an actual answer to my question which is this: I have two kids, two xbox 360's, and I want to know if I need to have two xbox live gold subscriptions, or if that's merely optional and what benefits would that provide them with?

In my searching I did see that the gamertag is account specific, however the gamer profiles are not, but that didn't really help me because I don't game on the 360's so I'm not familiar with the difference between those two on a functional level.

Can we have just the 1 XBLG account and they can both play online with that gamertag using two different 360's? And even if so, what is the benefit of a seperate network gamertag if they still use the same local gamer profile?

[GroundZero3]

If you want both of them online at the same time you will need two gold subscriptions.

Your online account is totally separate from your local gamer profile (as the content/achievements and whatnot are saved to the local drive).

[SiliconJon]

Good to know - now, me thinks I need to get a memory card that works with the 360 so they can use that to tote around their profiles as right now they're toting around their hard drives. Yes?

[GroundZero3]

Correct profiles arent huge, mainly what those hard drives are for are for storing the profiles, copying the games so they run off the drive, and downloading extra content/video for games

[SiliconJon]

Well, then it's Microsoft's insane price per megabyte I must patronize...

[GroundZero3]

Yeah its a bit silly, but there isnt much you can do if you want to use the system

[butch81385]

You are able to transfer your account from one xbox to another, so you will be able to use either xbox online (though only one at a time). The person online will have to use the name associated with the online account, so make sure it is a name that neither one minds (or that neither one likes!).

This will entail going into the menu and I can't remember if you need the address, credit card info, or just zip code to do the transfer, but in a minute or 2 it will be active on that xbox and not the other.

[RedFury]

Some games like Halo3 can allow you to go online with one gold account, and run guest accounts so that you don't have to have 2 gold accounts to play online. For example, I play with my 2 kids against my friend and his kid, and the kids are all "username1, username2" inserting the name associated with the gold account where "username" is.

What I don't get is how you can get 4 player online action with Halo and one gold account, but a game like Borderlands, which does have at least split screen, can't play more than one player online. Some of the ways they deal with that kind of thing have me perplexed.

[SiliconJon]

Seems like more openness would serve their gamers well. I have an XBLG account setup on each 360 with a hard drive. I'll have to put memory cards in their stockings. Any deals on those are appreciated.

I would like to take a moment and thank Dell for their $168.72 Elite deal. That was nice, wink wink nudge nudge. And I wish I would have bought 10 of the $30 12mo deals at Buy.com and played Santa locally. If I could get it 2-day shipped right now I would. and be sure to Check out DeaLighted.com for all your best deals! /spam

[RedFury]

Well, as far as the memory cards go, don't buy anything other than the microsoft cards and their 512mb sizes....they patched the Xbox to disallow the larger ones, so don't fall into the trap of buying a larger capacity one off craigslist thinking you are getting a deal.

[SiliconJon]

So far I'm pretty disappointed in some of the technical aspects of XBLG. Aside from the billing problem right now, we have to "recover gamertag" on the second XBLG account we created anytime we want to use it - no ability to just pull it up through normal sign-in (we get an error).