Xbox help

[Japril]

My ds has asked for an Xbox for his birthday and Christmas present (they are 2 days apart) and he has saved up £150 to contribute to the purchase. I am completely clueless when it comes to gaming and Would love some advice! I don’t know if he needs the subscription account to go with it (I saw that you could at £28.99 for 24 months) or we just pay the £450 to just get the console and then he buys games as and when he has saved up for
them? We currently only have one tv so do we need another one and if so does it have to be smart and/or connected to an aerial?
Any tips would be hugely appreciated!

The Xbox connects to the internet either wirelessly or by Ethernet cable do you don’t need a smart tv or an aerial. The Xbox has Netflix as an app so your ds can watch tv on it too.

I pay £10.99 a month for Xbox Live which means that my dd can download games for ‘free’. Honestly it saves a lot of money as games are expensive and often you don’t know if it’ll be a good game until you’ve played it!

I got my dd a second hand Xbox One X from Cex and it has been excellent. Came with the original box and a 12 month warranty. Would also advise buying a controller charger for the wireless controller and preferably having two controllers. I often play multiplayer games with my dd and her friends can play too if they are visiting.

Make sure to get a console that takes discs so you can buy second hand games, I believe for online games e.g. Call of duty ect you need the subscription

How old is your DS? You need a subscription to Xbox live gold to do online multiplayer, so if that's one of the things he's interested in.

Exactly what @Biscuitandacuppa said (we're also a fan of buying and selling on CEX - excellent warranty and customer service) also I would add a wireless headset so they can speak to and play with their friends.

He will be 10 on his birthday. He currently has a switch and plays minecraft and Roblox, but i disabled all options for chat and he calls his friends on FaceTime. I really don’t understand And am scared of the online stuff, are there parental controls so it can be locked down so he doesn’t talk to strangers? He is desperate for Fortnite and wants to play driving games.

Xbox have to a family settings app where you can control things like approving friend requests (you can set it so that only friends can use the online chat) and stop them buying anything! Not something I've used, so no idea if it's easy to circumvent.

You can get an Xbox series X which plays discs or an Xbox series S which is digital only. Personally I would pay for the console outright and then pay for a subscription for the digital games. It's 10.99pm for ultimate where you get the internet access and the game pass, or 6.99pm for the Xbox live gold which is just to play online multiplayer.

We have just bought DS an Xbox S (because we already have an X downstairs anyway so this is just for him). We will be paying the 10.99 for the ultimate. I'm pretty sure it has parental controls where you can restrict certain things.

I strongly suggest you do some reading about the Xbox etc to reassure and teach yourself about online safety.

it’ll go quickly from playing fortnite to older games as he gets older so better to be aware! He can play fortnite on the switch though?

We have the Xbox one S. it’s great - we bought it new and it’s lasted three years so far. We can also play Netflix, Disney etc on it. We have two TVs because if you’ve got other siblings etc then it’s not fair on them.

If you don’t want to get another TV, you can hook it up to a computer monitor with a HDMI cable.

Yes to a subscription for the games. Make sure you lock down purchases. You can go online and set your son up with his own Microsoft profile and put in place restrictions for game content etc.

For the controller, always best to have two if he ever has friends over. And get a decent rechargeable battery for the controller! There are specific ones for Xbox controllers. Saves buying batteries. Or you can get a more expensive controller that you recharge directly.

We got dd one for Christmas last year. We got it in the Black Friday sale and it was in the region of £250-280 for the digital one. We got the subscription free but never used it. We found she wasn't interested in the types of games that came included. So she saves up and buys any that she wants, which isn't often as she's a creature of habit.

Don't bother with Xbox series x as paying for the subscription is much better than buying games discs.

We bought the series X and it's a waste we should of just got series S.

Depending on the games they want you might be as well to have the Xbox Gold subscription and buy the games they want separately, also gives gift ideas for granny.

Xbox gold can be bought annually for £50 from xbox or £40 from CDkeys.

Our Xbox has a disc slot and it proved useful when our DVD player died! I downloaded the dvd app and now we can play Blu-ray and dvd’s on it.