the 30 day thing is bullshit, just fyi. they’ll call you in 30 days and have you check, it wont work, then its another 30 days. and another and another etc…
As I’m now going through this process I got the 30 day answer as well; at least I had people with a sense of humour after being in hold hell for an hour. When I finally got to speak with a supervisor I quoted him the 30 day policy and he honestly laughed out loud as asked how I knew that. I mentioned that I read the 142 page thread on Xbox.com about it so I knew what to expect. Unfortunately, now I have a problem that I doubt I’ll be able to rectify. When my 360 died right after getting Rock Band two weeks ago it wasn’t a full RRoD so MS wanted $110 to fix it and I’d be without my system for a while. Instead, I just exchanged it at a local EB run by some friends for a working used unit on the spot. I don’t have a receipt for this and they want a fax of that before they authorize the points (or licenses or however they do it these days). I understand why they’d want that but I might be better off just playing online and not buying the Arcade games I wanted (Rez and Puzzle Quest and E4) until I upgrade to an Elite way down the line.
Also of note: if you had a regular unit and went to an Elite you apparently would not qualify for getting your points/licenses back since they treat it as an upgrade. The only reason they were willing to help me was because I exchanged my premium for a core that I use my HD on.
On a related note, I brought my Xbox 360, memory card, and hard drive to a friend’s house for some Rock Band jamming (along with a full set of Rock Band equipment, so yeah, a whole lot of crap).
I found out that, unless you’re logged into Xbox Live, you will NOT have access to any DLC even if it’s already present on the hard drive. Luckily we were able to snake an ethernet cable to the Xbox 360 and get it connected to the internet, at which point my account logged in to Live, and the DLC magically appeared.
If you downloaded it first on your Xbox, it doesn’t matter if you brought your hard drive or not. It’s tied to your actual Xbox itself - a serial number of the CPU or chipset or something else non-interchangable. Most DLC should work on the 360 it was downloaded on, for all profiles, even if not connected to Live.
The reason you had to log into Live to unlock that stuff at your friend’s house is because the DLC was tied to your 360 at home, and of course to your gamertag. And if you’re accessing any DLC by virtue of having your gamertag around, you gotta log into Live.
The only thing you save by actually bringing your hard drive there is the time to re-download the tracks (assuming your friend has a hard drive too). And copying your gamertag to a MU and moving it around that way saves you the time to “recover” it at your friend’s house, and then “recover” it back to home.
Most DLC should work on the 360 it was downloaded on, for all profiles, even if not connected to Live.
Verified NOT true for Guitar Hero 3 DLC. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. As others have said, I guess this varies depending on the game…
I suspect that even if you make a perfect copy of your profile, only the one you log in on next will be accepted as the ‘legit’ one and the other will become stale and have to be recovered to be updated anyway, much like if you were to recover your account to two different systems.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I guess every time you log in, they write some sort of key-value pair to the account, where the key is stored on the Xbox Live servers. The next time you auth, the servers check to see if that value matches their key.
The point is that they store something server-side that we can’t get to, which tells them the last time that specific digital copy of the profile logged in to Live… thus they can prevent multiple copies of profiles from ever existing. :(
I keep thinking that to myself and not buying anything on XBL arcade. And yet I’ve impulse-bought just about everything on PSN that interests me.
Just tried it and it works for me. I signed out my main XBL account on which the DLC was downloaded, signed in a local account I created for guests, started GH3, created a new save since this account hasn’t played it before, and the DLC is all still there in the Downloads section in Quick Play.
GH3 only checks for DLC at certain points, like when first starting and when coming back from the Xbox Live submenu, so it’s possible for the DLC not to show up if a memory unit or drive with the DLC is attached while GH3 is already running and that check hasn’t been forced again.
Have you tried signing into that guest profile NOT connected to Live? Just locally signed-in (like unplug the ethernet cable or wifi adaptor)? I believe that’s what Wumpus was specifically talking about.
But yes, I’ve heard that GH3 is more restrictive in some fashion. I don’t have it so I can’t test. But that’s why I put “most” in my sentence. It works the way I said for everything I have - all DLC for all my game titles, arcade games, etc.
I don’t have GH3, but I know for certain that the downloaded content I bought for Crackdown doesn’t work if I’m signed into a different account. I had to sign up for another Live account just to be able to start my character fresh to play co-op with a friend.
The local account was a non-XBL one, but I just tried again with the ethernet unplugged and it still works; the local guest account can see and play all of the GH3 DLC, and not just the free stuff either.
if i’m not on live my xxx-point-purchased Mass Effect dashboard theme won’t load. bollocks.
Ok, so if GH3 DLC works the same as most other DLC, then I have a different explanation why it won’t work for wumpus. And it’s supplied by Evilidler:
Somebody at wumpus’ work place has swapped their 360 for the one at work, but not the hard drive. That means it has the same content, but the 360 that all the content was tied to is at someone’s house. And wherever it is, they can just download that content again (GH3, Rock Band, and more) on their own Hard Drive, and have it all work for them.
Meanwhile back at wumpus’ workplace, the 360 is not the one that all the content was purchased on, so it only works when whoever bought the content originally is logged in.
(On a related note, regarding the confusion above: The key thing to remember that people seem to keep forgetting is that the hard drive is just like a memory card. Whether you’re transferring content from one box to the other via a memory card or a hard drive doesn’t matter, it’s the same thing.)
Oh, somebody already made the switcheroo. Bastards. Well, I’m still in the official
DRM hate club, and would like to see MS make it easier to transfer your content.
While bitching about stupid things MS did, I want to bitch about how hard it is for me
to remove a credit card from Live. The page which is supposed to tell me where to
call (CALL? IN THE INTERNET AGE?! FUCK YOU, MICROSOFT!) never loads. It’s also on
a secure page, which it seems MS have big problems with. Since I’m not in the US,
I’m pretty sure it’s not a 1-800 number.
At least the hardware might be more stable. Now please work on more quiet DVD drives.
I just re-purchased 11,240 MS points worth of GH2, GH3, and RB content. That’s $140.50 for those of you keeping score at home :( DRM rocks!!
And there’s no way in HELL I’m switching my quiet HDMI capable Falcon for the noisy-ass old model at work. I had mine set up at work to get the dashboard updates, and many Xbox 360 owners stopped by and they all remarked how much quieter it was than their (earlier) models.
The local account was a non-XBL one, but I just tried again with the ethernet unplugged and it still works; the local guest account can see and play all of the GH3 DLC, and not just the free stuff either.
After I created my new xbox live account, I was able to confirm that the copy of Rez I previously bought on my home 360 under the original account was still playable. So you’re right, this should work, as long as it is on the same physical machine it was purchased on.
Not sure what’s going on with the work 360, though, because GH3 DLC was absolutely not showing up for us.
Heheh, I’m telling you man. One of your co-workers switched it out. One of them is guilty! :)
Huh. Sony allows you to copy DLC to up to FIVE DIFFERENT PS3s. Compare with Microsoft’s… one. ONE!
That’s fucking incredible. Sony? Wow.
It’s not as incredible when you consider how remote the chance is of knowing 4 other people with PS3s. Zing!
How does that work in practice though? I remember a lot of hoopla over the Warhawk DRM (only playable by the PSN id that bought it, or something like that).
But, yeah, being able to transfer the content (and not just the account) from one 360 to another would be a huge improvement from the current sorry mess.
I was irritatated to find out that I can’t access my downloaded content on my backup box without being connected to the net. I am in the process of setting up a Rock Band night at our local bar and will probably have to cancel since they don’t have an available internet connection and I don’t want to have to repurchase all the songs for both boxes.
Harkonis, your only option is to take your physical Xbox 360 (not the HDD, the entire box). That will work in the absence of an internet connection.