When I got my Xbox 360, I also got an Xbox Live Gold account so I could play online with folks. Jenn, too, wanted to play, so she got a Gold account as well. Cool.

Of course, Jenn wants to play at the same time I’m playing, which is neat, even though we don’t work cooperatively for crap. (Ironic?) What that means is we need Xbox 360 games that support multiple people playing online from the same console.

Don’t all of them do that? Actually, it turns out not as many as you’d think do. On classic Xbox, Halo 2 supports two people on the same Xbox logged into Live at the same time (actually, I think it supports up to four on the same Xbox while logged into Live). But which games on Xbox 360?

You’d think Gauntlet would - it supports up to four people in the game, and it doesn’t even need split-screen. Nope - you can either play multiple people on the Xbox or you can play online, but not both at the same time. What about PGR3? Nope - same deal, you get to pick.

Of course, this was pretty disappointing to Jenn, who bought the account specifically to play, and thus far has really only had a chance to get on with Halo 2. (Again, she wants to play with me, and I don’t have two Xbox 360 consoles.)

On an up note, I found a database that is gathering information on which games support this sort of thing. I think this is going to be a huge resource for me: http://www.45six.com/xbox/360games/

As of this writing, I have my choice of Perfect Dark Zero, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, or The Outfit. (Luckily, we own The Outfit and like it, so we now just need to convince our friends to pick it up.)

UPDATE 3/31/08: Looks like Co-Optimus has started a nice listing of co-op games for several systems.