I have noticed that quite a few of the games I play allow me to have a second player split-screen online with me by signing in as a guest. I always do it by starting up the game and then through that sign my friend in as a guest, but isn't there a way to sign in as a guest on a second controller without launching a game first?
I'm asking this because some games allow you to splitscreen with a guest account but they don't offer you the opportunity to sign in as a guest so you have to launch a second game that does first.
Best Answer
There's no way to sign in as a guest from the Xbox 360 Dashboard because signing in as a guest doesn't have any meaning until you're trying to play online. The purpose of signing in as a guest is to utilize the online features of a game without having to pay for Live Gold yourself. Instead, you piggyback on another gamertag's subscription.
Microsoft describes it this way:
The major features of the Xbox Live dashboard (themes, achievement progress, avatars, etc) are available to any profile, regardless of Live status, so signing in as a guest doesn't really apply.
If you can't seem to sign in as a guest, it may be because you're signed into a profile on the second (or third/fourth) controller already. Sign out of the non-Xbox Live Gold profile and try again.