Besides the steep economic outlay for a second tv, console, room for the devices etc, I'm not a fan of the second console setup. I play games on console with someone locally so we can be sitting next to each other so we can see each other's face and have a good talk at the same time without yelling between rooms or wear uncomfortable headsets.

OK, so my bro and I do play the odd online game but that's because he moved out and online is convenient every now and then.

And my bro and I use to have our own little PC LAN set up but we each have a PC because we need one for work/study in the first place and the gaming is a bonus. The more social feel of couch co-op on the PS3 was one reason why we migrated from PC gaming back to consoles.

For those that want the second setup, by all means set one up. But I personally prefer split screen.

Of course I have! My goal is to get ALL the consoles I want, and maybe have two of them, just to play games with my bro via System Link.

I had two X360's, but one of them got RROD-d and we sold it, and we sold the other one 2 or 3 months before that, cuz we needed the money.

Now I need to buy a PSP /Preferably Go, because my bro wants that and not a 3000/

Yay you responded to our email thank you!

Will be reading this guide this afternoon but at the moment I'm trying to fix a rrod xbox to become our 2nd console and see how that goes lol.

Thank you,
Peter & Ruth.

Here is my Co-op setup for when I play with my friends. It's over the top and we love it.

http://www.co-optimus.com/blogs/glavasi ... setup.html

Borderlands and Saints Row 2 were the games that really sealed the deal on getting a second console for my husband and me. We get around the two different rooms situation by using a custom gaming cart rig that houses our second 360 and has speakers and a monitor permanently attached. We just wheel it in next to the main TV and sit side by side, so we're next to each other even when playing non-splitscreen co-op titles.

Here's the setup during one of our extended Dead Rising 2 sessions http://twitpic.com/2ueaf6

I appreciate the feedback, folks. Please, keep it coming.

@glavasich & @CtrlAltDeviant,

I love both of your gaming rigs! I've been trying to get my wife to agree to the two-system, same-room-setup, but she's adamantly against it. Which sucks, because we've got the extra room. I like the whole temporary idea. I might have to give that a go.

@Guitarse Hope it works out for you! You guys had a nice idea for a Co-Op Couples piece.

We actually came by our second Xbox 360 because our first system RROD'd. We sent it out for repairs, and after a day or two of missing the 360 we started to get the shakes. We realized that we would go insane if we didn't shoot something or someone in the face, and soon. We decided that the most lawful solution was to pick up a second 360.

@Cubninja

Yea, my setup would become a bit cumbersome if it happened more than once a week. The cart rig sounds like a great idea

This would have been our first dual xbox co-op weekend, but the cheap used xbox that i bought from ebay arrived with an RROD. booo.

The main problem about gaming in the same room is the audio. We live in an appartment where sound travels, and we have people living either side and below, so we have two sets of headphones anyway for watching movies late at night.

the main xbox plugs into the tv and 2.1 pc speakers. there's a handy headphone socket on the speaker's volume control so we use that.

the 2nd xbox will be plugged into a 19" widescreen monitor via vga. The xbox outpluts audio at line level with little in the way of volume control, so i bought an excellent little gadget: the Fiio E5 headphone amp (about £15). This thing recharges via usb, has plenty of power to drive a set of decent headphones, has a volume control and a bass boost. For the money this little thing is amazing. We also use it to boost the signal when watching movies, since we're driving two headphones from one output via a splitter cable.

Very good write up. I think my wife and I decided to get a second xbox for Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Our setup is pretty simple in our bedroom we have the Xbox slim with just a standard CRT tv.

If anyone has the money I highly recommend it as it opens up so many more great co-op titles.

I sprung for a 2nd xbox so that my BFF and I could enjoy FPS games free of the shackles of split screen. I do miss couch co-op, but my television and computer desk are in the same room so it still feels like we're playing together

The only annoyance I'm still working on is that if a 3rd friend joins us via xbox live we hear each other echoed in our headsets. I've been meaning to check out if it's possibly to mute a specific player even if you're in the same xbox live party with them. I'll report here when I get a chance to test it.

Is it just me, or does it feel like with the advent of HD and the current generation of consoles split screen actually got less playable? I feel like with the shrinking reticles and text of HD games in general cram more into the screen than the PS2 days. I remember playing timesplitters split screen and finding it perfectly playable, but then when we tried gears split screen feeling totally cramped and squinting all the time.

Hell, even playing single player games I feel like I have to get closer to the screen than I used to years ago, and I know my eyes haven't gotten worse!

(I may repost this question elsewhere to get more exposure for the question, I'm really interested to hear if it's just me.)

We do everything on 2 xboxs, one on the big screen and one on a 24" monitor. Here's some ideas

Sacred 2
Halo Wars
Too Human
R6V2

There are a ton of games that have split screen, that I can't imagine using it once you have access to 2 separate screens, like

Resident Evil 5
Portal 2
Gears
Hunted

I'm going top be going to work overseas for three months whilst my Player 2 stays at home for the duration. Since sitting around and just looking at each other on Skype is kinda awkward, we're going to do the whole talk-for-hours-on-VoIP thing over xbox whilst catching up on all those co-op games that infuriated us by not being couch.