Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Christmas

From present ideas to party food, find all your Christmas inspiration here.

Original poster

I need help - Xbox complete novice parent

12 replies

wanttokickoffbutcant · 08/10/2023 01:46

DD 13 has requested an Xbox for Christmas. I have literally no knowledge of anything re gaming and dad does everything on a Mac and isn't being much help.

Can I get an Xbox Series S and that will be acceptable? I really don't want to stretch to the X and pay the £200 difference when she already has so much tech.

Would her friends take the piss? She has an IPad and a Switch that are both good spec but I don't even think she uses the Switch that much anymore.

I know she probably sounds spoilt - she is an only child and these were gifts over a period of time from us and family.

OP posts:
greengobbledygook · 08/10/2023 02:14

The only difference between the X and the S is - the S doesn't have a disc drive so you have to buy games digitally on the Xbox store or cd-keys. This is fine really as you'll have to pay £12.99 a month for the xbox games pass which gives her a whole library of games to play, like hundreds of games, but the pass is essential to let her play online with friends.

I would say go for the series S 1tb though, it's almost double the storage. The real downfall of the series S is the lack of storage, so the 1tb would be perfect if she's quite into gaming.

Original poster
wanttokickoffbutcant · 08/10/2023 03:43

Thanks so much although that means nothing to me! Will check it out tomorrow - I thought you had to go and buy games like DVD's.....I am old ....I can live with the £12.99

OP posts:
Kryten1958 · 08/10/2023 04:23

I bought the more expensive Xbox series X because for my needs it is much better value for money.

  1. I needed a DVD/blue ray player as my old one broke. It plays DVDs and blue ray movies in sharp bright ultra HD. To buy this feature as a stand alone unit would be much more money.
  2. As it has a disc drive, I can buy second hand games on disc for a fraction of the original price.
Nat6999 · 08/10/2023 06:42

Kryten1958 · 08/10/2023 04:23

I bought the more expensive Xbox series X because for my needs it is much better value for money.

  1. I needed a DVD/blue ray player as my old one broke. It plays DVDs and blue ray movies in sharp bright ultra HD. To buy this feature as a stand alone unit would be much more money.
  2. As it has a disc drive, I can buy second hand games on disc for a fraction of the original price.

These are some of the reasons ds bought the Series X Xbox, he upgraded from the Xbox one. Even with the bigger memory of the Series X he has had to buy a Seagate hard drive to add more memory as he had completely filled it with games. He uses his as a TV tuner & has all the things like Iplayer on & Sky Go on it.

Ivalueloyaltyaboveallelse · 08/10/2023 08:17

We have both. DC1 has the series s prefers it as nobody uses discs anymore. Dc1 just downloads everything but bought an expensive memory card so has lots of storage. Youngest has the series x as still uses their discs games occasionally. However this is becoming less and less now.

BeastOfBODMAS · 08/10/2023 12:49

What sort of games does your DD play? One of the advantages of Xbox is it is compatible with almost everything from previous generations, so if you have a disc drive you can pick up old Xbox 360 games on disc for pence and play them.
(unlike PlayStation who make you buy old games again to play them on the PS5)

OneFrenchEgg · 08/10/2023 13:07

Hi here are some tips from a 'been there done that' parent of four:

S is fine. We have three x boxes and 2 PS4s of varying ages.

Set up the account with a different email address to yours. I can't stress this enough. I set up my then small kids Xbox under my Hotmail account. Years later he has accumulated rewards, history etc etc and you can't separate the Xbox account from your overall Microsoft account. Google tells me other parents have found this. So he had my log in details and theoretically could see my emails and files if he wanted to. You can't transfer it.
I ended up setting up a new Microsoft account for me and deleting or forwarding what I could from the old one.

The online subscription means they can talk to friends and chat. Monitor the email account in case they get banned etc. Plus you can then go through and check chats. Some of the messages were horrendous so I stopped them adding friends and only if they could tell me who they were in real life.

Original poster
wanttokickoffbutcant · 10/10/2023 23:13

Thanks all - she doesn't have any existing games so I have gone ahead and bought the S and it was delivered today. Do I need to wait til we set it up and then buy the pass thing or buy it now and activate from the device? I am hopeless at this stuff but don't want her to not be able to play anything other than the FIFA it comes with on Christmas day.......

OP posts:
KeeefBurtain · 10/10/2023 23:23

Wait to buy the pass. It starts from the time you buy it so if you do it now it will have run out by the time you give it to her.

it only takes a minute to do so won’t take up time on Xmas day

YerAWizardHarry · 10/10/2023 23:26

We have an X and an S (and a PS5, Switch and all the other games consoles you could dream of 🙄) the Series S is totally fine for a novice gamer!

DaizenShine · 11/10/2023 11:34

wanttokickoffbutcant · 10/10/2023 23:13

Thanks all - she doesn't have any existing games so I have gone ahead and bought the S and it was delivered today. Do I need to wait til we set it up and then buy the pass thing or buy it now and activate from the device? I am hopeless at this stuff but don't want her to not be able to play anything other than the FIFA it comes with on Christmas day.......

Definitely wait til Christmas Day as someone said above. When you buy the pass, a lot of games are on Cloud streaming too, which means they can be played instantly without downloading. Fifa takes around 1.5 hours to download so this will keep her busy Grin

DollyDaisyDo · 11/10/2023 16:55

I came on to say make sure you set it up before Christmas Day as you'll find it very, very slow otherwise as everyone is trying to set it up at the same time!

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread