Be Excellent To Each Other

So I've got a ton of games in a bookshelf to my right. If I wanted to let my brother play Racedriver: GRID, I'd pass him the box and off he'd go. I'm old fashioned like that.

With XBLA games, I know that one bro (let's call him Mr. Tom) has Symphony of the Night, and my sister (let's call her Mr. Sarah) has Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Sonic the Hedgehog. What would Mr.s Tom and Sarah have to do to let me play their games (with my gamertag)?

They'd have to transfer their game licenses and profile data to your console, which means they'd only be able to play the games on their own consoles if they were connected to the internet. It's really probably not worth all the hassle, just buy the stuff yourself I'd say.

http://forums.xbox.com/xbox_support/f/27/t/46093.aspx

Not quite. They could log into your Xbox 360 with their own gamertags and download the games. You'll then be able to play them using your gamertag. No licence transferral required.

But only while they're still logged in as well, right? Or has it changed? Or did I just misunderstand the whole thing in the first place?

Yeah, I thought they'd have to be signed on with their gamer tag too.

I don't believe that's true. Having a game downloaded onto an Xbox isn't enough, you'd then need to be either logged in as the gamertag that owned the game or have transferred the license over to unlock the game of any logged in user.

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-360 ... 6c9dae9c65

Aye.

It's like you have two licenses, one which is tied to the console you bought it on, can be played offline by anyone on that console at any time. You can do a license transfer to switch these licenses to another console.

You also have another license that is tied to your account. Any console that your account is currently logged into can download and play stuff, but as soon as you log out it will be inaccessible.

I'm not sure what happens if you have bought/downloaded a bunch of stuff on one console, take that console offline, then transfer the licenses to a new console.

This confusion is very reassuring - I had a sinking feeling that it was simple and I was stupid for not understanding.

My understanding was that when you buy a title:
- It's attached to you. You can download and play it anywhere you've signed in.
- It's attached to your console. Anyone can play it after you've downloaded it on that console.

Outside of your console, anyone can play your title if you're signed in (on another pad?).

So I'd have to ask them to do an account recovery onto my console and download their games themselves and then let me have them idling signed in while I play?

But does that mean I have to be online or not?