Must-Have Accessories for Your XBox 360

Although it takes nothing more than a console, a controller and a game to play your XBox 360, you are not realizing the full potential of your system with only these basic elements. There are many upgrades and accessories for the XBox 360 that will make your gaming experience much better, and surprisingly, you won't have to dig too deep into your wallet to afford them.

XBox Live: There are many great games for the XBox 360 that do not support online play, and there are many games that do support online play that have perfectly acceptable single-player modes. However, an XBox Live account is the foundation around which your entire gaming experience is built. Some games have online play that you just can't pass up. However, actually playing games is just the beginning of what you can do with Live. Most games have downloadable content such as expansions, bonus levels, and important fixes for bugs and other problems. You can rent movies and TV shows from a fairly extensive library, but if this is not enough, you can subscribe to Netflix directly from your console. Along with your Live account, you can also access MSN Messenger right from your XBox. For just $50 a year, it's a small price to pay for all the benefits.

Headset: Speaking from personal experience, it's not much fun playing games online without a headset. Listening to people talk trash and not being able to say anything back gets old extremely fast. Besides being able to curse at your enemies, you can also have private chats and send voice messages. This can be an extremely handy alternative to making a phone call or having a text conversation, which can distract you from your gaming. A brand-new, working headset from Microsoft will run you about $20, but wireless models will generally be about double that.

Controller Charger: Getting tired of changing out the batteries in your wireless controller every few days? There are a few models of chargers out there that allow you to plug in your controller (some models require you to remove the battery pack from the controller) and recharge the batteries for you. I bought a charger from Energizer that charges three controllers at once for under $25. It might seem unnecessary, but trust me, you'll be thankful when you don't have to buy anymore AA batteries.

Memory Upgrade: When I first got my XBox 360, I thought it would be impossible to use up the 12 GB hard drive that came with it. Game files, and even music files, don't take up much room. However, once I discovered exactly how many good TV shows that Live had in its archive, I quickly found it filling up. If you want to take full advantage of your Live account, you should definitely consider at least another 20 GB of hard drive. You can pick this up for about $50.

This is just a small list of possibilities, but they are all essential to maximizing your gaming experience.