Xbox Live, saved games, accounts, etc.

Steev

So, my brother is coming to stay here for a few months. He's definitely going to want to play my recently-acquired 360, and that's fine with me. I'm wondering how Xbox Live stuff works with this sort of thing, though. Here are a few questions:

First of all, I can have more than one XBL account on my 360, right? I'm assuming yes when I ask the rest of these questions.

Do all 360 games create separate save files for each XBL account? In other words, if he loads up GTA4 with his gamertag logged in, will it load up his saved game, or just whichever one was autosaved last?

I have a gold membership. Does this mean he'll be able to play online using his gamertag on my 360 if he keeps his account at silver?

Thanks everyone. I might have more questions later.

Local H Jay

tell him to snap off his hard drive and he can bring it with him to your place.

memory on the 360 is tied to a certain account, so save A for profile A can only be accessed by profile A.
you can recover his account onto your hard drive, but his saves will not transfer. if you have a memory card, you could transfer those saves.

if he's only silver, he cannot play online, unless you play a game that allows guests like Halo2/3 or Gears of War.

Steev

I should have made it more clear -- he doesn't have a 360 at all. He'd be making a brand new account on my hard drive.

Local H Jay

ah.
well, no problem here. you can just make him a silver account and play the above mentioned games with him online, or some local co-op. if your in a game where you have saves, he can play those with you.

Dehumanized

Worth mentioning that if you create a new XBL account on the 360 then select silver, it gives you a free month of gold. So, he'd be able to play online at least for a while.