Players will soon be able to send games as gifts via the Xbox One Store, similar to how Steam users can purchase titles as gifts to friends.
Xbox VP Mike Ybarra revealed the possibly forthcoming option via Twitter, stating that Microsoft is "not far" off from adding support for players who want to gift friends some titles from the store.
Xbox One To Get Game Gifting Option
Beyond offering a vague release schedule, Ybarra's tweet didn't offer more specific details, including how the option will work, although it should be a pretty simple enough affair if you think about it.
Despite no concrete release window for the option to gift games, the news isn't much of a surprise, especially for Microsoft, which has recently been making efforts to make its platform more open. Just recently, the company announced grand plans to unify all versions of Minecraft to offer a single, similar experience regardless of what platform the game is played on. Microsoft even included in such plans — but not Sony.
Both Microsoft and Sony have been pretty shaky on their cross-platform plans, although the former has been more open to the idea of cross-platform play than the latter.
But cross-platform aside, both Sony and Microsoft currently don't offer the option for players to gift games to their friends. It looks like Microsoft will be the first out of the two to start offering it, though, if Ybarra's words hold water.
Better Late Than Never
Xbox One users have long been asking Microsoft to let them gift games. In fact, one post on the company's Xbox feedback site has racked up almost 5,000 votes over the last three years. Why Microsoft hasn't still included the feature probably boggles a lot of Xbox One users' minds, but at least it's coming, right? Better late than never, as the saying goes.
One possible reason for the lack of gifts on the Xbox One Store is that some users might purchase a title at a discounted price and gift it to another user who lives in a place where the same discount isn't available — therefore taking advantage of a sale that might be specific to one area. It's a harmless trick, to be sure, although it's easy to see why it would concern Microsoft from a business standpoint.
Again, Ybarra didn't offer any specific release schedule for the forthcoming gifting feature, but with Gamescom occurring next month, Microsoft might offer more details soon.
