[Dasilva]

Could someone tell me how Xbox live works? How you get points? Why you get points? I've never had Xbox live, so I'd like to know if its worth it. Thanks.

[SakSquash]

Xbox live lets you play games against other people over a broadband connection. Through xbox live, you can buy points, which act as currency used to buy xbox live arcade games as well as other things.

Short and sweet. Need more?

[Dasilva]

How much is the subscription?

[Lucien21]

It's about £40 a year

[Karmillo]

Ive wondered about the gamer rating thing, does it get calculated by how well you do in a game or is there something where other players rate each other?

[EvoG]

If you're referring to the stars next to the name, thats affected by positive or negative ratings you're given by other players. I'd believe that most people would be at the default three stars, with only the most obnoxious players or the players with the most myspace friends having more or less stars. I can't really see a good reason why people would voluntarily rate others outside of any meaningful context(questionaire?).

[Lucien21]

Like EvoG says the Stars are your reputation which you gain or lose from others praising or reporting you while playing multiplayer games.

E.g go on PGR 3 and swear and ram people off road best way to get down to one star.

I think it also depends on the gaming zone are you go into i.e the Underground zone anything goes the family zone you have to play nice.

The numbers represent the amount of achievements you have obtained while playing the game. Each game has 1000 points for doing various tasks like Tomb Raider (125 points for finishing game, 10 points for finishing each time trial level, 75 points per level completed etc) basically just a way to keep people playing the game to get maximum points for replaying and finding out all the bonus points.

Some games are really stingy. Perfect Dark Zero gives you 10 measly points for fiishing the entire game. most of the 1000 points are from kills etc in multiplayer.

You can compare achievements against your mates or against everyone on live and see how many sad gits do nothing but play Xbox 360 games (there are some with over 30000 points.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

E.g go on PGR 3 and swear and ram people off road best way to get down to one star.

Thats probably the opposite for Burnout

[Dasilva]

So if you finish a game once you can't get more points by finishing it again?

[Lucien21]

Nope unless you finish it in normal level and then there are usually extra points for finishing it in hard mode.

Some of the points take forever to get like in Ghost Recon there is 25 points for 10,000 kills in multiplayer (That might take a little while)

Once you have a game you can check on the menu for the list of achievments and what they are worth.

Or check here

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/

[SoccerDude28]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

So if you finish a game once you can't get more points by finishing it again?

Different games distribute points differently. There's a whole article on gamespot that talks about the 360 games, and which ones are the easiest to get points for.

[Huz]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

It's about £40 a year

You get a free trial of Xbox Live with certain games, although of course that doesn't get you the headset. Should give you a good idea of how worthwhile it is, though!