Xbox
Buying for someone who plays Xbox might seem straightforward. Except when you’re actually in the store thinking, “Wait, do they already have this game? Is their controller actually ok? Is this thing I’m about to spend money on just going to earn a polite smile before getting stuffed into a drawer somewhere?” Yeah, we’ve been there too. Xbox gift-buying is harder than most folks realize because your gaming friend or family member probably knows way better than you what they want. They’ve either already bought it, or they’re waiting for that one special justification to buy it themselves.
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We didn’t want to ask those folks what they want. We asked them what would actually land. Not just something to stuff in a gift bag, not the thing that most remotely looks like “an Xbox gift” from across the room. We asked what an Xbox player would actually be excited to unwrap this holiday season. Doing that weeded out a ton of stuff right off the bat.
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If it’s generic swag that they’ll hang on the wall but never actually use, you won’t find it here. If it’s some donger they definitely already own 3 versions of, you won’t find it. Low quality accessories got ejected too. As did any individual games that we don’t know will land.
What you’ll find is things that make the Xbox experience better than they might have been already. Like a nice headset to replace the brick they’ve been pretending to like. Or a charging pad so their controllers don’t die at the worst possible moment. Game Pass because it’s as close to a guilt-free gift as you’ll find these days and it’s never short on new games to play. Carefully selected physical games you can trust we’ve actually played instead of some popped in because it had a cool box.
And we considered the giftees in this scenario too. The ones on the receiving end of gifts from people who don’t game. The knowledge gap there can be substantial, and we wanted to bridge it correctly. Each one of these comes with enough of our reasoning behind it that you can instantly know if it’ll work for the Xbox player in your life. No more guessing!
Gamers take their hobbies seriously. Xbox players are no different. If you’re looking for something halfway decent to gift them this year, it better be good. Otherwise, they’ll know you didn’t try very hard. Each suggestion here cleared that bar for us. That’s how we built our list, and that’s why it’s so short.