We’re less than five days away from the Christmas holiday, but hey, we get it — this has been an atypical year. Things have been disorderly, to say the least. If you’re still scrambling to find gifts for the gamer in your life, it’s perfectly understandable. Perhaps this last-minute Xbox gift guide can help.
Below, you’ll find our ideas for what you can put under the tree (or maybe in an envelope, or in an email). You still have time to snag these products before the holiday arrives, so scroll down and start making your list.
Games, of course
You are probably past the point where you can pick up a new Xbox Series X or S for your loved one, but if they still have an Xbox One, Xbox One S, or Xbox One X sitting in the living room, they can still play Xbox games. And the best part? Thanks to backward compatibility on Microsoft’s new consoles, these games won’t just become obsolete once your intended recipient upgrades.
Some of the bigger (and better received) titles from this year include:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Watch Dogs: Legion
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon
- Gears Tactics
There are also some absolute must-plays for those who own an Xbox, though you might want to check someone’s library before you go and gift one of these. You don’t want to give them a second copy of something, right?
- Gears 5
- Forza Horizon 4
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection
One game we don’t recommend picking up, sadly, is Cyberpunk 2077. The game doesn’t run well on base Xbox consoles, and if your giftee has an Xbox Series X, we recommend you do them a solid and let them wait for the next-gen optimized version so they can experience it in all its glory.
Xbox gift cards
If your special gamer isn’t really into purchasing discs anymore, you can save yourself a little bit of stress by going the Xbox gift card route. These contain set amounts of currency that can be spent on the Xbox digital store, and as it happens, there’s a decent sale going on right now that could help stretch those dollars out a lot further than usual.
Xbox gift cards are also a good choice if you’re really not sure what to buy. If the stacks of games in Jimmy’s room look like the Library of Congress, a gift card will ensure you won’t have to make any returns later when you accidentally buy something he already has.
Xbox Game Pass subscription
If you really want to bury your giftee in a deluge of games, there’s really no better option than Xbox Game Pass. The service gives you access to a catalog of over 100 titles, and monthly subscription prices can go as low as $9.99 per month or as high as $14.99 per month (if you opt for Game Pass Ultimate).
Personally, I am of the opinion that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the best way to go here. That includes access to the service on both console and PC, offers cloud streaming capability, and even throws in an Xbox Live Gold subscription for good measure. Xbox Live Gold is required to play games online and costs $9.99 per month all on its own, so with that taken into account, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is a heck of a deal.
By the way, you can get a three-month subscription to Game Pass Ultimate right now for just $34.88.
Seagate Expansion Card
This one is only going to apply to those who were able to snag an Xbox Series X/S, and whose loved one will be downloading terabytes and terabytes of games this holiday season. Microsoft’s new consoles, while impressive, don’t really leave you a lot of space for game storage. This is especially true for the Xbox Series S, which only packs in a 500 GB solid-state drive.
While USB storage drives can store new Xbox Series X and S optimized games, you can’t play them without transferring them to internal storage. The Seagate Expansion Card adds another 1 TB of storage capacity to either the Series X or Series S, and does so at the same speed as the internal storage drive. Long story short, your giftee won’t have to fuss around uninstalling old games, installing new ones, or waiting for long transfers. This gift will save them a lot of time and frustration, even if it is absurdly expensive at $219.99.
Keep in mind if you are buying this from Amazon, by the way — you want the 1 TB version of this that says “Series X Expansion Card.” It looks like the photo above. All the other drives are USB drives — even those that say “SSD” on them. They will work for storage, but newer games can’t be played from them.