The second of my Top 5 posts is a little different to what will be normal as instead of looking at a particular category of games, I am instead examining what Xbox specific websites, console owners will find the most useful:

Number 5: Trueachievements.com

I have only recently discovered this site and so I have not had time to evaluate if fully, but the concept behind it is one that many achievement addicts have been desiring for ages. What the site does is convert all of your achievements into a modified gamerscore created by a formula that takes the difficulty of the achievements into account rather than the random gamerscore assigned to it on creation. This means that the gamerscore you get for completing Avatar is currently relatively unchanged at 1003 but getting all the achievements in Guitar Hero 3 would net you 4012 points given the difficulty of the achievements.

Number 4: MyGamerCard.net

MyGamerCard.net is one of the older community sites, and is still one of the most useful as it allows you to turn your Gamertag into an image to use as you want. This is demonstrated by the Shamertag image below (note multiple variations of card are available). There are also a multitude of leader boards that indicate where you rank in the world, either in terms of total gamerscore or on a particular game.

Number 3: 360Voice.com

Have you ever wondered what your Xbox 360 would say about you? well wonder no more sign up with 360 Voice and find out as your Xbox blogs about your gaming escapades and complains about the lack of them. That is not all there is to the site as you can  set up group blogs and also arrange Gamerscore challenges for your friends to see who can gain the most gamerscore over a set period of time.

Number 2: MajorNelson.com

The official “unofficial” Xbox Blog, run by Larry Hyrb (Major Nelson), the Xbox Live Director of Programming. His blog is the place to go to quickly find out the latest official news about what is going on in the world of Xbox Live. If there are any significant problems with Xbox Live or if it is shut down for maintenence his blog is one of the best places to go to find out information about it. It is also worth visiting for his weekly podcasts that can be listened to from his site or via itunes.

Number 1: Xbox.com

While Xbox.com is the official site it is still probably the most useful given the myriad of tasks it allows you to do. These include the ability to modify your Gamer profile, send messages including friend requests over Xbox live, and arrange downloads from the Xbox Live Marketplace from the site. On a more practical level if anything goes wrong with your console you can use Xbox.com to arrange repairs and to arrange DRM license transfers to a different console (limited to once per year). This choice of number 1 may be boring but Xbox.com is probably for most Xbox 360 owners still the most useful site to visit.