Where to save high scores in an XNA game?

Question

I'm making a simple 2 player game in XNA and started looking into saving the player's high scores.

I want the game to work on the XBox 360 as well as Windows, so I have to use the framework to save the data.

It seems that you save data to a particular user's gamer tag - so my question is, what to do with high scores?

• Save the user's own scores in their profile? (So you can only see your own scores if you're the only one signed in)
• Try and save other player's scores in all profiles? (Seems like a pain to try and keep this sync'd)
• Store scores online
  • The 360 seems to have a standard method for showing friend's high scores. Can this be accessed from within XNA, or is it only available to published games?
  • Roll my own. (Seems excessive for such a small personal project.)

Answer 1

Here's one way that has been accomplished that seems extremely simple and easy to implement.

http://xnaessentials.com/tutorials/highscores.aspx/tutorials/highscores.aspx

Answer 2

the XNA Live API doesn't give you access to leaderboards ... so your real only option is to store the scores locally. If you want users to see each other's scores ... you could use two different stores. The player's store for his own save data ... and then title storage to store scores.

Of course then, if the 360 has more than one storage device, they'll have to select it twice ... but you could only let them choose the device for scores if they go into the high score section.

Answer 3

You may want to read http://www.enchantedage.com/highscores. It uses XNA network sessions to share high scores with other xboxs playing the same game.