I feel like I should know this, but I don’t. My wife and I both have profiles on our 360. I bought Pinball FX2 awhile ago on mine. I just noticed hers has acquired 300 points from somewhere, probably one of those promotions MS was running earlier this year. If I buy the new Mars table on her account, can I play it with my accounts copy of FX2?
no.345.
Your gamertag owns the game but her gamertag would own the downloadable content?
I’m really not certain how that would work out.
Whenever you buy content from Xbox Live, you get two licenses: One is associated with the account you buy it with, and one is associated with the box you first buy it on. So your wife will have access to that FX2 table on any Xbox that she chooses to download it on. Since the core Pinball FX2 game is free for everyone, that’s not a problem for that account.
And the second license: for the machine it is bought on, you’ll have access to that table on that particular Xbox with your account too. But if you have to replace that box, then you’ll have to re-associate the license with that box again, which can be done twice a year at most, I believe, to prevent abuse of that system.
Bottom line: Yes, you’re fine. Buy the Mars table with your wife’s account, and you’ll both have access to it on the box you buy it on.
Just chiming in to confirm this. My brother and I used to go 50/50 on points purchases for this very reason: Buy on my account on his system, then download a copy using my profile on my system. Two copies for the price of one (though the first was temporary – delete it and it was gone).
Also, if you don’t have a super-strict account separation, it’s worth noting that you can always sign in your wife’s account on an unused second controller, just to enable the licensing.
Take a good look at your records and bank statements. I just found several hundred dollars of unauthorized points purchases on my account this past week. MS is in the process of investigating it, but I certainly didn’t buy them. It was over 20,000 points.
Ouch, that’s terrible. Definitely not the case for me, but good to know.