Microsoft may soon allows gamers to loan or gift their friends digital games on the Xbox One.
According to GameSpot’s interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Microsoft is looking at digital games as the future. He wants to make a push forward concerning Xbox One’s digital game marketplace and rules.
“On the digital space, and the things that we’ve talked about, what that opens up…like we understand what games you own and who you are and how you move around and who you might want to loan rights to your games or gift your games to,” Spencer said. “We totally believe in that future. And any other marketplace you play in, these kind of mechanisms are out there.”
“We are now fully heads down on thinking about and building out the future of our digital marketplace to enable what people would expect, and hopefully some things that will delight them beyond their expectations.”
This could mean big savings for people with many gamer friends. One of the biggest downfalls of purchasing digital games is that they cannot be sold to places like GameStop or Walmart. However, if Xbox One makes lending and gifting happen, it will eliminate this problem entirely.
Valve’s Steam recently enacted a similar program that seems to be going well. Steam Family Sharing currently allows users to lend their games to up to ten different account. But, like lending someone a physical copy of the game, only one person may it play at the same time. Either way, it is much better than having the game be linked to only one account.
Hopefully, Microsoft will make these changes soon. It’s about time buyers of digital games get some sort of resell-able or reusable value from the games they buy.
What do you think about digital game lending or gifting? Would it make you buy more digital games on the Xbox One? Let us know below!