MogTip: 5 Awesome Things You Didn’t Know Was On Your Xbox 360
- April 15th, 2010
- By MogKnight
So, you bought an Xbox 360. You put that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game into your system, you play online and shoot people. You turn that system off and that’s it.
So, you bought a system just for a few games that you can play online and not even touch the rest of the stuff that you’re entitled to? That’s like buying a mansion and never using the pool. It is sad that a lot of people buy an Xbox 360 and miss out on a lot of things that they can get for absolutely free and they just don’t use it. Either they don’t care, don’t want to look or don’t care to look. Well, this is what this guide is for.A lot of gamers tend to leave things at default for their Xbox 360. This means that when you put a game disc into your Xbox 360, it simply reads it and boots straight up into the game. However, there are a lot of things on that dashboard that is being bypassed everyday that a lot of games don’t realize. There are even things that gamers might know about but end up never exploring because they simply didn’t know about it. So, lets have a looksee as to what is on your Xbox 360.
1. Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm on the Dashboard
I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook, I have a Last.fm account. A lot of other people out there are on Twitter, are on Facebook and probably have a Last.fm account or maybe Pandora. You can access your Twitter and Facebook account and even update your status straight from the Xbox’s Dashboard. Also with a recent update, you can now view people’s walls and everything as if you were in front of a computer. Why would you do this straight from your Xbox 360? Well, if you don’t have a computer nearby and you’re on your Xbox 360 in the living room, there you go.
Last.fm is a music streaming service that generates music choices based on what you like. Last.fm on your Xbox 360, while it can’t play in the middle of a game (though hopefully that will change very soon), you can at least stream music straight from the net to your TV so you can have awesome parties without the deadly silence if you lack other means of having music.
2. Watch movies in more ways than one
There’s four general ways to watch a movie on your Xbox 360. One is by putting in a DVD and watch movies with the built in DVD player. Another way is to put movies from your PC to your Xbox and you can do this either by putting the movie in a USB drive, stream it over the network or plug in your iPod or iPhone with movies in it. As a matter of fact, you can even plug in your iPod or Zune and play music straight from it… so now that’s 6 awesome things you didn’t know was on your Xbox 360.
There is always the video marketplace on your Xbox 360 dashboard. Instead of going out and renting movies, why not just stream it straight from the marketplace for a relatively small price? The nice thing is that you rent movies instead of owning them, which makes them affordable in the first place. You rent the movie for a duration of time (usually 24 hours after playing the movie once) and then just delete it after watching.
You might have known about those 3 methods but what about this fourth one? Do you have a Netflix account? If not, you should consider getting one just for the sheer amount of awesomeness you can get for only $9.99 each month. Here’s how it works: First, you get a Netflix account that offers unlimited streaming. The cheapest one you can get is $9.99 per month which includes streaming and allowing you to rent one movie out a t time via physical disc. You don’t even have to rent a disc if you want to unless you want to bring a movie to a friend’s house or something. For that $9.99, you can stream a HUGE library of movies to your Xbox 360 and it’s unlimited, there is no limit as to how many movies or hours you can stream within that month that you pay. If you are a movie junkie and you have an Xbox, I HIGHLY suggest setting this up, you won’t be disappointed. Check out the Netflix panel on your dashboard for more details. You can even invite people to your party to watch Netflix movies together.
3. Primetime Shows like 1 vs 100
While they’re offseason right now in prep for the next one, there are Primetime shows on Xbox Live where you can partake in gameshows and challenge many other gamers while trying to win prizes yourself. 1 vs 100 was a good example of this and will be going into their 3rd season soon. You can simply load up 1 vs 100 and join any active session. However, there would be an actual live show where there will be a real human person actually commentating and interacting. It’s like you’re on a gameshow and playing but you’re in front of your TV and probably be gaming with the rest of your friends. Much fun to be had here.
4. Huge backlog of Demos
You’re thinking about your next choice for buying a game but you already played through the current recent stuff. You want a game though and you want to try out multiple games. Did you know that your Xbox 360 has a huge backlog of demos that largely go ignored? A lot of times I get asked “Oh man, I wanna try blahblahblah game but I dunno if it’s good” and I’m like “Did you know there’s demo for that on your Xbox?” Surprised, they get pointed towards the Game Marketplace and now they’re enjoying the demo and went out and bought the game. Microsoft should pay me for that… but anyways, you can have a lot of fun with your Xbox without having a disc inside it. I remember when I first bought my 360 and I didn’t have anything but Final Fantasy XI on it. I lived off of demos and well, I haven’t even completed the entire backlog if it and there were more games I wanted to try out, Supreme Commander 2 being one of them.
What most people don’t even know is that these Xbox Live Arcade Titles ALL have a trial mode. You can try out any Xbox Live Arcade title just by downloading it and playing the demo. If you like it, buy it, if not, at least you can still play the demo and have yet more games that you can potentially test out and try. If you’re bored one day, just go through the list. You might find a good gem among everything.
5. Indie Games
This box art that you’re looking at is for a game called “I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1” It is an indie game, which means it was not made by a higher end professional publisher but by an independent group or person. This game is only $1. This game is probably one of the most entertaining games I’ve ever played, at least for a game that is only $1. There are many great games by many small developers that are being uploaded onto the Xbox 360′s Indie Game section and no one even knows that it’s there. It’s very sad considering how many other great jewels there are such as Tunescape, The Impossible Game, or Impossible Avatar Getaway. Do yourself a great favor. Not only are you going to be supporting many developers into making good games but you’ll find a game you’ll really enjoy. Take the time to look at the Indie Game list on your Xbox, much like the Arcade games, they all have a trial.
Hanh "MogKnight" Nguyen is owner and Editor-in-Chief of The Mog Blog. A fan of pushing buttons and making things happen. He has recently been seen going around random GameStops to slowly rebuild his Dynasty Warriors collection.
