How To Gift Xbox One Games to Friends, Family & Strangers

The ability to gift games on Xbox One has finally arrived. At this moment in time, the feature is only available to those in the Xbox Insider Program that have preview build 1710 installed. This feature will be available to everyone in the upcoming update this fall, at least that’s the general assumption. It’s possibly more testing will be needed and it’ll be delayed.

It’s a really easy thing to do as well. The option to gift your purchase will show up adjacent to the option for personal purchases. From there, you either choose a friend from your Friends list or you enter the email address of the person and that’s all there is to it. The remainder of the purchase is the same way as before where you enter you payment options and then pay for the game. The team at Windows Central has confirmed the feature does work and they were able to download a gifted title with no problems.

The Xbox Store and the Windows 10 store will both have the option for this. We expect most of the Xbox Play Anywhere titles, such as Cuphead, will be added to this feature. Play Anywhere titles are games that, if purchased digitally, give you a copy on both Xbox One and your Windows 10 PC.

This method works for games you already own as well. The option to “Buy as gift” should appear between the options of Play and Game hub. Presumably you’ll be able to gift as many titles as you want to friends, family and complete strangers if you’re feeling generous.

For the person receiving the game, a notification of a gifted game will appear via email, regardless of the option you chose above. The email will contain a redeemable 25-digit pre-paid code, that can be redeemed via Xbox Live to any Microsoft account.

There’s no definitive release date for the upcoming update so if you’re not in the Preview Program you’re looking at a while longer before you can test this feature. In the meantime, you’ll have to stick with gifting physical copies of games from Amazon or something.

In more Xbox news, we’re quickly coming up on the launch of the Xbox One X. With the new console, Microsoft promises to deliver true 4K gaming, whether that’s something that can be done or not is entirely different. Mountain Dew and Doritos have teamed up and are giving away an Xbox One X every minute. The contest started September 25 and all you have to do is enter codes you get from select Doritos or Mountain Dew products at Every60Seconds.com for a chance to win.

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