Cloud saves? - How can I play games regularly on 2 xbox's?

Another question - would I be able to download my Battlefield 3 DLC and patch files to the 2nd Xbox without any issues?

You are right about the Cloud Saves. You could leave XBox 1, sign into XBox 2 and have your saves available via the cloud.

The thing is, it's tied to your XBL Account and you can only be active on one console at a time. So everytime you changed consoles, you would have to recover your gamer tag to that console.

There is a way around it though, you can recover your gamer tag to a USB drive and take that with you from console to console. I have done it, and it works pretty well. At the time I did it, they didn't have the cloud yet, so I was also saving to the USB Drive.

You would be able to re-download anything you have purchased over XBL to any console you're signed in on using the GT that made the purchase, so yes you could have your DLC and patches on each console. When your wife logged into that console however, and used her tag, she would not have access to content you have purchased. It would only be available to your tag and you can only be signed into one console at once.

I hope that answers your question, good luck with it! It's a bit cumbersome at first, but once you get used to it, it's not so bad.

You just need to know your password to recover a gamertag.

A little clarification here; Your gamertag can in fact reside on more than one console at a time. However, the account will not be stored in the cloud. All you would need to do would be to download your gamertag to the second console, and then you may sign in on either console. You may only be signed into one instance of your account at a time.

Additionally, the cloud save feature is only available to Gold Members, but not lost forever should your Gold account revert to Silver.

I have been using the Cloud feature across three consoles without any problems.

More information can be found here.

There is no recovering anymore.  All you need to do is download your tag to the other console and select Remember Password so you don't have to fill in the info every time.

Your wife cannot use the cloud if she is silver.  It is for gold members only so you can use it and access your game saves on either console.

You can redownload your DLC to the new console with no problems.  However, no one else will be able to access that DLC on the new console unless your gamertag is physically signed in.  You can do a License Transfer to the new console if you like.  The DLC will stay on the old console and will be fully accessible on the new one.

Here is how to do a license transfer:

support.xbox.com/.../download-content

[quote user="KingScottCarpie"]She doesn't use or require an xbox live account and would probably stick to playing on one of the consoles only (but if it's possible for her to easily switch then please let me know).[/quote]Put her profile on a USB Memory Unit, along with all save game files. She can then move it between consoles at will. Note that this doesn't get around some games that require a specific console for save game usage or complete profile functionality (ME1 character import, Forza series, etc.).[quote]As I understand it my hard drive game save currently syncs to the cloud,[/quote]Sort of?

Cloud Saves only sync when the game they were played on is run on the specific console you want to use the Cloud Saves on. If you play Battlefield 3 on Console A, Console B won't get those save files sync'ed until you play Battlefield 3 on Console B. Likewise, if you play on Console B, the game saves will not sync to Console A until you boot up Battlefield 3 again.

Note than once you enable and start using Cloud Saves, you'll see that your 360 does not power off completely when you shut it down. The center light will slowly blink until the console finishes background syncing of Cloud Saves.

Having said all this, I do not advocate the use of Cloud Storage at this time. There are instances where you'll be unable to install a new title because the system is trying to enumerate all possible install locations, including the Cloud Storage device. Since the Cloud Storage device does not sync saves unless you play the games individually that have saves in the Cloud, this means you either have to log out of Live to do a game install or you have to run every game that is out of sync.

Currently, Cloud Storage is more trouble than it's worth if you already have a tried and true Memory Unit with your profile and game saves on it. You also gain the added advantage of not having to store your profile on multiple consoles. The less places your profile exists, the better.

[quote user="KingScottCarpie"]She doesn't use or require an xbox live account and would probably stick to playing on one of the consoles only (but if it's possible for her to easily switch then please let me know).

I would play on both consoles, pretty much only Battlefield 3 at the moment. As I understand it my hard drive game save currently syncs to the cloud, so if I signed on to a new xbox I could retrieve my cloud save and play with it. But would I then need to save again to the cloud and when switching xboxes do anything special to retrieve my save?[/quote]

Your HDD saves do not save to the cloud. If you want to use Cloud Storage, you have to enable it and use the Cloud Storage device for your saved games, rather than using the HDD for your saves. (Meaning, you've moved your current HDD saves to the Cloud device, and when you launch a game and it asks where your current save file is or where you want your new one, you pick Cloud Storage.) Since you're a Gold member, that is the simplest way for you to use your saves on two different Xbox 360 consoles, assuming that both consoles are always connected to your home network and Xbox Live.

If your wife doesn't need Gold membership, the USB flash drive option is the simplest way for her to get multi-console flexibility if the need arises.

I disagree that Cloud Storage is too glitchy to be worthwhile at the moment, but then I really only use one console, and use the cloud as insurance against losing my saved games if one of my storage devices fails. Perhaps it is more annoying for people regularly using multiple consoles, and if both consoles are at home then using a USB flash drive might be reasonably convenient even for a Gold member.

[quote user="DannoMcK"]Your HDD saves do not save to the cloud.[/quote]They do, in a manner of speaking.

Cloud Storage creates a reserved area on your storage device. When you're playing a game on the console, your saves go to that reserved space. When you finish and/or power off, those saves upload to Live. If you were to, say, pull the power plug after playing, those saves would not sync until the next time you played the game on that specific console.[quote]I disagree that Cloud Storage is too glitchy to be worthwhile at the moment, but then I really only use one console[/quote]As you are using only one console, you're really not in a position to disagree with the assessment of someone who has attempted to use Cloud saves across two different consoles in the same home. Additionally, the install issue has been experienced by several other people in the forums who are using Cloud Storage.

Keep in mind I did not tell him not to. I advised agaisnt it and layed out why if you have a reliable USB Memory Unit there's no real advantage. Also, there's nothing that says you can't copy saves from a MU to Cloud Storage.

I can speak on the use of the cloud system as I have 2 consoles that I and my wife play on.  Personally, I've not had any serious problems with using the cloud at all.  The only issue I had was recently when the cloud system went down for a few hours.  But that issue was solved by actually going into the cloud storage and moving the saves to my hard drive so I could access them.