XBL Question

[Xorphious]

I've heard this works, but am not positive...

When you LAN two (or multiple) 360's together, is it true that only one person needs an XBL account, and everyone connected will be able to play online? Is it like a "per household" type of thing?

My wife and I were considering getting an XBL account, if we could just LAN our two 360's together and both play online using one account, since not all games support system link and there are some we'd like to play together. It's just not worth it for us to pay for two Gold accounts in order to do this, so I'm hoping we can just use one.

I came across someone stating that, "as long as one person has an account, then everyone can play online", in regards to someone asking a question on some random site, regarding a 360 LAN party they wanted to host.

Thanks in advance for any info.

 

[Redleader]

I think everyone can play online on one xbox not multiple ones. You can find 13 month XBL cards on eBay for $30, just do that. If you cant swing $60 for a year then Xbox might not be something to worry about.

 

[Grentz]

Everyone can play online on one xbox, but I have never seen it with multiple xboxs.

Note that even though everyone can play, it depends on the game and some games wont let guests in ranked playlists (like in Halo you cannot go into the normal playlists with guests).

 

[Kahnvex]

I've heard this works, but am not positive...

When you LAN two (or multiple) 360's together, is it true that only one person needs an XBL account, and everyone connected will be able to play online? Is it like a "per household" type of thing?

This is not totally accurate^^^

I'll clarify what I know personally. Certain games allow you to play split screen on one box, and have up to 4 people playing on one xbox with only one Xbox Live gold account. Halo 3 is the best example of this that I have seen in action (besides the limitations on ranked matches listed above). I don't play the sports games, so I can't comment on stuff like Madden 10 maybe somebody could fill that blank in. Most cooperative enabled games allow a guest account when split screening or doing multiplayer on one box...

Marvel Ultimate Alliance springs to mind, as well as COD4, as exceptions to that rule. I'm sure there are others.

As far as hooking multiple 360's up to the net in one house and having only one gold account active, No. That doesn't work. If everyone wants to play separately on their own box against other people online, that requires a gold account per person. So if you have a box and I have a box, and we both want to get online and play COD or whatever, we both have to have individual gold accounts.

 

[Freezebyte]

On certain games like Halo 3, you can create multiple "guest" accounts to play split screen with, but if you want to fight others on your own accounts, you BOTH need to have seperate Gold Live accounts.

As far as LANing 360's together, every 360 will at least need to have 1 gold membership per machine to play online. With MS pushing Xbox Live hardcore, very few games support just regular "LAN" only mode.

 

[Kahnvex]

With MS pushing Xbox Live hardcore, very few games support just regular "LAN" only mode.

Not trying to be a dick, but in the interest of giving the OP accurate info, you might clarify that a bit. All of the popular FPS's on the 360 support "system link", which OP, that's Microsoft speak for "LAN play"

I was trying to find one that didn't, and of all the semi popular new and old FPS games I've got, the only one that doesn't is Battlefield:Bad Company... Gears of War would be a glaring omission, as the first one only supports split screen it seems. Don't have the box for 2 in front of me, so I can't check that.

I can't speak for EA's sports games of course, since I really don't play them, but other games I have that are co-op that don't require a second box are at least multi-player on one box.

But looking at all the Call of Duty games, Ghost Recon, Halo 3, hell, even Forza 2, those all support System Link. Call of Duty 4 even lets you do 24 players total on LAN vs 18 over Live. Never noticed that before.

In all fairness though, you're right, MS would rather you play on XBL.

 

[Xorphious]

Thanks for the responses.

It didn't totally sound right to me that multiple people could use multiple 360's and only account, but since I had seen someone mention it elsewhere, I wanted to check... and you've answered my question, thanks.

Yeah, there are games that support System Link, which is the way I'm hoping we'd be able to play any games we might want on console as opposed to PC. It'd be pretty disappointing to have to buy to XBL accounts just to play co-op online, since the co-op together is all we're looking for, not really online against other players.

My wife is into shooters as well, and we're hoping that Borderlands supports System Link, since it does not have split-screen.

Thanks again.

 

[Kahnvex]

Thanks for the responses.

It didn't totally sound right to me that multiple people could use multiple 360's and only account, but since I had seen someone mention it elsewhere, I wanted to check... and you've answered my question, thanks.

Yeah, there are games that support System Link, which is the way I'm hoping we'd be able to play any games we might want on console as opposed to PC. It'd be pretty disappointing to have to buy to XBL accounts just to play co-op online, since the co-op together is all we're looking for, not really online against other players.

My wife is into shooters as well, and we're hoping that Borderlands supports System Link, since it does not have split-screen.

Thanks again.

All the previews I just looked up for Borderlands say that it does system link AND split screen co-op, so it sounds like you're in luck. You got me reading about it, and now it sounds like I'm going to have to buy it. Sounds sweet