For the life of me, I cannot figure this out. Each of my 3 kids got iPods for Christmas. The 2 oldest set their Game Center accounts up on their own but I have to do the third one for the youngest. Neither of the older kids are any help, they can't figure out what I'm doing wrong either. Somehow, the two oldest only have to log in with their usernames and not their email addresses. On my Game Center friends list, they show up as "username" (with the quotes) where everyone else shows up as First Last. When I try to create the youngest's account, I'm asked to create a new Apple ID or sign in with my existing one. His email address is not an Apple ID but I get this error with both addresses: When I look at the account info for the other iPods there is no email address listed. We all use the same Apple ID to purchase apps so it's listed as the main account on each of them. However, for iMessage and FaceTime they have also entered their own email addresses. All 3 of their addresses have been verified on my appleid.apple.com profile. Any idea as to what I'm doing wrong?
I've already done a ton of Googling on this but something I just ran across seems to indicate that the other two were created improperly. It seems that Game Center requires a new Apple ID if you don't want to use the one created for the App Store. I don't know how the other two got around this. One of the things I noticed about the other two is that they don't have an option for a photo or a status bar. A lot of people were reporting this as a bug when the upgraded from iOS 4 to 5, but ours already came with 5.0. We did upgrade to 5.0.1 but we created our GC accounts after the upgrade so I don't know what's going on. Really, it doesn't matter. I don't mind that each of them have their own Apple IDs. I haven't found a problem with it yet. If anyone has any insight, feel free to share, but I'm considering this problem solved.
Really strange. I actually have 5 devices currently linked to my account. However, four of them have different GC accounts. All of them have everything a GC account normally has. Three devices were updated from iOS 4.x.x to iOS 5.0, and two devices came with it. The 4 GC accounts all use different email addresses as well. Not sure how it was possible to make an account without an email address. Sorry, I'm not really sure what a solution would be.
Alright, just checked up on some stuff. Actually, four of the devices were updated to iOS 5. The one that came with iOS 5 is my brother's new 4th gen. iPod, which he got for Christmas. Just checked out the GC on it, and it indeed does not allow you to change the picture or change the status. Also, under the account name, it just says his GC username. There's no email. The family iPad 2 also uses his GC account, but the two options are there. Not sure what's the issue. Going to check out the account info on the iPad 2 when I get the chance in the morning. Will get back to you. Not sure what's going on atm. I'm thinking it's something to do with the device coming with 5.0 though.
Thanks for your help. All three of these were bought at the same time, one is white and two are black. Two were connected to iTunes before creating GC accounts and one was not. The one that wasn't connected to iTunes first already has a lot of apps on it so it would have to be wiped clean and then started over from scratch to get it to sync. It's not the one with this weird GC issue. I only mention all of that to show that they're all different. They're different colors, setup differently, but they all came with the same iOS installed and they've all been upgraded to the latest version (before creating GC accounts). This whole process hasn't been a complete waste of time. I did learn that each of them can have their own iCloud account so I don't have to worry about them connecting their devices to the family PC just to back up their stuff.
Alright, I just looked at the GC on the iPad 2. Turns out there's no email (Apple ID) linked to it. Can't change the status/profile pic. The account name just says the username of the GC. I think something changed with iOS 5.0. Back then, I don't think GC actually required you to enter an email address (previous Apple ID). After iOS 5.0, it made the account name of the GC account into an Apple ID. Yeah, I'm still not sure what the solution is. I'll look into it.
Don't worry about it. I've decided to make them each their own Apple IDs so they can back all of their stuff up to their own iCloud storage ... so it's all worked out in the end. Thanks for your help!
