Twitter is a fantastic source of information related to the video game community. You can follow your favorite games and the top developers. You can even follow the Mac Daddy companies like Microsoft and Sony directly. Today proved that it’s also incredibly important to keep an eye on some of the high level employees at these companies. Sometimes, they’ll share little nuggets of wisdom if you just pay close enough attention.
The person in question today is Mike Ybarra, Microsoft’s corporate vice president. A user tweeted him directly asking how far off we are from being able to give purchases to friends as gifts. Ybarra responded with, “Not far!”
This is a simple response, but it has a lot of really great repercussions for us as gamers. Currently, the only way you can really buy digital copies of games for friends is through Steam on PC. There’s no system in place on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Nintendo Switch. But if one of these big names takes a step to allow such a thing, it’s possible that others will follow.
I use Steam’s gift system often when I’m looking to buy something small for a friend. It’s really easy to get a couple dollar game on sale and simply send it to a friend. Having the option to do something like this on consoles would be a game changer for me. My dad lives half way across the country from me, but he loves playing Xbox One games. Now rather than buying and shipping him a game or getting him Xbox gift cards, I could simply digitally purchase an awesome game for him. Loses all the hassle, and reaps all the rewards.
A big ol’ personal thanks from me to Microsoft for initiating such a feature in the future. Here’s hoping Sony and/or Nintendo will take note and try to have similar systems!
Source: GameSpot