First few things to do after buying your XBOX360

After you bought the XBOX360 console, brought it home, delightfully unboxed it and plugged it into the TV, there are a few things that you should do before popping in the game discs and start playing.

The most important thing to do now is to get your XBOX360 connected to the internet.
Be sure you know your home's wireless security settings as the current XBOX360s have a built-in wifi that allows you to connect wirelessly without additional hardware.





Once you have connectivity to the internet, the console will prompt to to create a XBOX Live account. For that, you will need a Windows Live ID account. You can either use your existing Hotmail or Microsoft Live.com's email account if you already have one. Or you can use any email address you are currently using (yahoo,gmail,etc). The password used to sign on XBOX Live with your 3rd party email address does not need to be the same as the one you use to access your emails.

For any new XBOX Live account creation with a newly bought console, there will be one month of free XBOX Live GOLD membership. (even though a 3 month Gold membership scratch card code is included). To maximize your total of 4 months XBOX Live Gold membership, do not redeem the code ( scratch the card ) immediately. Wait until when your first month of Gold membership is about to expire before you redeem your 3 months XBOX Live membership code.

Next, if the XBOX360 comes with an included Kinect sensor, you should perform the Kinect calibration with the calibration card included with your console.

Kinect Calibration Card

Now that you have created your XBOX Live account, you might want to choose your avatar and perhaps customize the look of your avatar. You will spend some time to customize how you want to appear on XBOX Live to other games. Have some fun creating how you want your alter-ego to appear. Here's how mine looks like...

gamertag : franklinneo

Once you have signed on to XBOX Live, do have a look at the Games Marketplace. This is where you can see all the games available on the console and there are summaries, screen shots and ratings of each of the games here. Some games listed on the Games Marketplace have downloadable demos which allows you to play a small part of the game to try it out before actually buying them. This is a commendable feature of the XBOX360 console and the XBOX Live service as it allows owners to start playing even when they have not purchased any games yet. I recommend trying the demos for "Fruit Ninja Kinect" and "Dance Central".

There are also games which can be purchased using the Games Marketplace. The currency used here may be real currency ( payable via online credit card or Paypal transaction ) or by Microsoft Points. These games are then downloaded into your XBOX360 HDD and the full game is playable from the HDD without any game disc once you pay for it via the Game Marketplace interface.

Full games and game demos might take some time to complete its download, therefore you might want to enable low power mode when downloads have not completed fully. To do this, navigate to "settings/system/console settings/startup and shutdown/background downloads" and enable the background downloads. This will ensure that the console will go into low-power mode and continue the active downloads before fully shutting down. (ie safe to press the power button on the console front panel, but do leave the AC plugged in and switched on ).

Now that you have signed on to XBOX Live and familiarized yourself with the XBOX Dashboard interface, do add some friends whom also have the XBOX360 and are on XBOX Live too. Certain games will allow the high scores to be shared amongst friends for competition sake ( eg Fruit Ninja Kinect ). Last but not least, do add me as friend in your XBOX Live. (See above for my gamertag).

Have lots of fun!