Hi I’m definitely a beginner in understanding the complexities of music software.
I have Cubase elements and am wanting to use my xbox controller to activate different sounds, sort of like a midi controller. Is this possible?
As far as I know there are no drivers which let the xbox controller send midi signals/commands, so the answer is NO untill proven otherwise.
It’s possible though not as simple as plug n play you’d get with a proper midi controller.
http://www.howtogeek.com/79988/turn-a-gamepad-into-a-midi-controller-to-use-with-audio-software/
Brilliant, that’s what this forum is when it’s on it’s best 
This must mean you can turn things the other way round and use Cubase to play video games then?
Another vital feature 
Doesn’t one of the schwa/stillwell plugins have a defender type game you have to play for a few seconds whilst you’re running it on demo mode? I seem to remember I spent a little too long playing that.
The article uses MIDI Yoke. I had to stop using that when I moved to 64-bit as it was only 32-bit - they may have upgrade to 64 since. I switched to LoopBe at the time, but if you google “virtual MIDI” there are a fair amount of similar tools available.