Xbox One game gifting now available to the public

Earlier this year game gifting made its debut on Xbox One, allowing select users to send digital titles over Xbox Live. Since its initial appearance, Microsoft has been slowly rolling out the feature via the Xbox Insider Program and today, that functionality expands to all Xbox One consoles.

Like similar solutions available on rival platforms, Xbox One game gifting adds the ability to send digital game licenses between players through the integrated Microsoft Store. By selecting "Buy as gift" on the Store page, users can choose a friend or email address to receive the gift, before following a familiar checkout process. A 25-digit code will then be sent to the recipient via email, for redemption on the console.

There are some minor restrictions on gifting, however for many, should be a simple way to treat friends for the holidays. For example, while most games and DLC are giftable, preorders, backward compatible games, and consumable items are all excluded. There are also some restrictions on sending bulk discounts games and redeeming codes between regions, to prevent abuse of the system.

For more information on Xbox One game gifting, make sure to take a look at our FAQ, which provides an in-depth look at the restrictions in place. For those wanting to start sending gifts today, we also have a handy game gifting how-to available.

CATEGORIES
Matt Brown

Matt Brown was formerly a Windows Central's Senior Editor, Xbox & PC, at Future. Following over seven years of professional consumer technology and gaming coverage, he’s focused on the world of Microsoft's gaming efforts. You can follow him on Twitter @mattjbrown.

Latest in Xbox
The Thing: Remastered key art
The Thing comes to Xbox Cloud Gaming's "Stream Your Own Game" library alongside other new arrivals
Cover art for Heroes of the Storm.
Xbox Game Pass will give you more benefits in free-to-play games like Heroes of the Storm
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 accessibility settings at launch.
Activision user research workers form union under Microsoft
Xbox Game Hubs 2025
A quick look at Xbox's new "Game Hubs," a small new feature that may be more meaningful than you think
8BitDo Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard Xbox Edition
Drop everything — the Xbox keyboard is on sale
Xbox
Microsoft's Xbox strategy has reader opinions split almost perfectly in half
Latest in News
Cloud servers
Microsoft has killed "several" data center projects in the U.S. and Europe, according to reports
Photo of Microsoft's new sign-in page for Xbox.com using the Microsoft Edge browser.
Over one billion users will get a new Microsoft user experience, and it has a dark mode
The Thing: Remastered key art
The Thing comes to Xbox Cloud Gaming's "Stream Your Own Game" library alongside other new arrivals
Promotional screenshot of heroes fighting a giant in Pillars of Eternity
Obsidian's classic Baldur's Gate successor 'Pillars of Eternity' is getting a surprise turn-based mode later this year, alongside other updates
Atomfall
Atomfall reviews and Metacritic scores are in: Here's a roundup of what everyone's saying about this new Game Pass survival game
Screenshot of one of the new flat world presets in Minecraft.
Minecraft testing new flat world presets and a better way to locate your friends in-game