Recently my girlfriend and I purchased a second Xbox 360. I have a serious disliking of split screen and she has a seriously disliking for watching me play Smackdown vs. Raw for three hour sessions so in many ways, it seemed like the way to go.
So picture this, between us we have bought two premium Xbox 360’s, two extra controllers (four in total), thirteen X360 games (not including a second copy Gears of War and Project Gotham racing). That figure also doesn’t account for 10 original Xbox games (which in turn doesn’t count an additional copy of Halo 2). I also own an original Xbox (as not all my favourite games are BC yet) with two controllers and a DVD playback kit. If you’re thinking “fanboy” at this point then note that I also own a PS2, PSP, Dreamcast (R.I.P) and Gamecube.
As if all that money invested in Microsoft’s next gen console wasn’t enough we’ve each got our own paid gamertags (gold membership). So, we wire up the new X360 and recover the gamertags onto it so now we have our profiles on both consoles. I log into my profile on the new console and it works fine. She tries to log into her profile on the first X360 and it says her profile is invalid. Apparently you can no longer have a “roaming” profile whereas you could on the original Xbox. The only way to fix this is for her to recover her profile back onto the first X360. So, now her profile is locked to the first console and mine is locked to the second console.
The reason this is such a big deal is because the first X360 is linked up to a Hi-Def output and the second isn’t. If only one of us is playing then that person would obviously want to use the Hi-Def display. So, if I want Hi-Def I have to recover my gamertag (which takes a while – there is quite a bit attached to it). Now imagine we wanna play some online / co-op gears I have to go back over and recover my tag again (according to Microsoft, doing this to often can lead to deletion of offline achievements). Safe to say this is a frivolous and annoying routine.
There is light at the end of the tunnel but sadly there is a pound sign obscuring it. Ever wonder why you would need a memory unit when the hard drive detaches? This is why; if you wanna use your gamertag on a different console without having to frequently recover it then you’ll need to give it a mobile home. Basically you move your gamertag onto the MU (with all your save games) and you take it with you. Whatever Xbox you wanna play on you put your MU in and go – no recover necessary. This method works well but its sad that after all the expense of getting two consoles, two paid subscriptions and two copies of each game you wanna play together you also need to buy a MU. This seems like a deliberate move on Microsoft’s part as this was never an issue with the original Xbox.
Also note that if you buy an Xbox Live arcade game that the game will be locked to your gamertag. If you have another gamertag on the same 360 as your gamertag then they will be able to play the game however if you copy the game onto a MU and move it to a 360 that hasn’t gotten an account that the game has been paid for; then the game will once again be locked. In essence if you have two gamertags you will have to purchase two copies of the game in order to play against each other online.
On a happier note, during a first to seven match up on Gears last night the score was tied at six to six. It was just my girlfriend against one other guy. After a lot of fire exchange, rolling, swearing, and a rapid heartbeat she put him down and won the match for the team. The girls are rising up against the boys and to quote Gears “The war continues……"
