A not-so-secret Santa recently gifted my household with a new fully loaded Xbox360 Pro Console. It came with two additional wireless controllers, battery chargers a few games and a Xbox Live Gold Subscription for one year. My two oldest sons love video games and when our original Xbox kicked the bucket after years of constant use, it was complete devastation to the boys. An Xbox 360 topped their list of what they wanted Santa to bring them this year and they are going to be more than surprised to find this set up in our family room come Christmas morning.
With my previous Xbox, I didn’t take advantage of the Xbox Live service offered. We soley used it for games purchased and as a DVD/CD player. When I was told of all the great things and fun that Xbox Live could provide for my family, I knew it was something I wanted to sign up for. I decided to get my ducks in a row prior to the big day next Monday by registering with Xbox Live and obtaining a gamertag. For now, I just went through the process of creating a gamertag for myself as the primary tag, but will soon be taking the time to set up one for the boys.
Different Styles Of Xbox 360 Gamertags:
Pierce Mattie president has this gamertag. The backround changes to the theme of the the game played last.
Notice how Jeremy Wright (of B5 Media) has more points then us, and played F.E.A.R. last.
You can look at the celebrity leaderboard and view the who's who in gaming on MyGamercard.net
I started off by going to Xbox.com and scanning through their pages to figure out how to create my gamertag. It took a lot of clicking to try to figure out how to register. After calling a friend, I was told that I needed to create an account with MSN first. So I went to MSN.com and registered an email address I already had in place. I was thankful it didn’t require me to create another email account all together. I had to wait about 15 minutes before I received the confirmation email that required me to click a link in the email to validate my account.
From there, I went back to Xbox.com and clicked to register, which prompted me to create my gamertag name, enter some personal info., choose an avatar and a motto. I was disappointed with the lack of avatar selections available, especially for females. I’m sure there is probably some way for me to create my own avatar, but as a first timer, I just stuck to what they offered.
I then had to enter my registered MSN email address to proceed. It brought me to the Silver Membership page, which at first confused me since I had a Gold Membership Card. I decided to proceed forward and enter the information it asked and upon clicking “next” it prompted me to upgrade if I wanted to. I then chose to enter my promotional code from my 12 month Gold Membership card. From there I had to wait for a confirmation email in my email to click and validate my account. I received that within 3 minutes, clicked the link, which then brought me back to Xbox.com and told me to wait for a private message on the Xbox Live Forum. That took about 5 minutes (but it says it can take up to 30) and once I clicked that validation code, everything was complete.
Wow, what a process. It seems they really could cut down on the steps or the various sites you have to go to just to register your account and create your gamertag. I can’t imagine someone who may be newer to the internet trying to do all of these steps. I advise that you bookmark pages as you go along, as it makes it easier to return to your gamertag and the forums in the future. I ended up adding a step, by creating a profile on MyGamercard.net, just as Steve did in an earlier post here on the blog.
If there were shortcuts I could’ve taken in all of this, please be sure to post them in the comments so that others can learn what they are. If you are out there playing on Xbox Live, give me your recommendations for some game playing.
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