I’m considering buying a used XBox 360. I’ve never signed up for XBox live so I’m not sure what the procedure is. Is the particular console hardware attached to a certain XBox live account? If I buy a used one, will it be expecting me to be using the account the original owner signed up under?
Or is the account portable? Could you log into your XBox live account on another XBox? If your console died, could you buy another one, log into your account, and re-download all of your purchased content?
Does that just mean that I won’t get the free trial month, or is that something that’s required in setting up an XBox live account?
Feel free to chime in with any other advice regarding buying a used XBox. I know they have a fairly high failure rate and that’s discouraging. Some refurb model distrubutors come with a 30 day exchange policy which gives me some comfort - if the unit is prone to breaking, can I expect it to die within the first 30 days? A lot of them recommend squaretrade.com which is an independent warranty provider - their cost seems to be around $25 for a year of extended coverage on a unit which seems like a decent deal.
I bought my 360 used from Gamestop. As luck would have it, I came in about five minutes after someone had sold theirs and I got it before they had entered it into their inventory (it seems like it would have been entered when it was sold to them, but who knows), so they hadn’t had time to format the HD yet. I took it home and formatted it (which is easily done from the dashboard), which wiped out two XBL thingers on there. I then created my own, and it worked fine. The moral: you can log into your XBL account from multiple XBoxes, and you can create your own XBL account on an XBox that already has one on it.
Mine has worked fine since I got it last October, but YMMV as always. I’m not 100% positive on the re-downloading purchased content issue, as it hasn’t happened to me.
I recommend that you read the forums at Xbox; there is a huge amount of information there, straight from the users of the system.
Not all of your individual information is going to be stored on-line. I recommend looking into Xplorer360 which is some share-ware which lets you hook up your Xbox HD to your PC and transfer data. The recommended approach is to save all of your stuff before you ship your expired 360 off for replacement. This is discussed in-depth over at the Xbox Forums. If you have trouble locating the thread, PM me for a link.
We are on our 3rd 360. I’ve gotten them from Best Buy, so I always get the extended warranty; we’ve used that twice.
As per ‘will it break in the first 30 days’ - that’s anybody’s guess. Both of our failed ones were probably six months to a year old before they died. You can also find some tips for adding a larger fan, extra cooling thingies, etc. at Xbox forums.