What does a parent need to know about XBox?

November 20, 2018 9:42 AM

My teen-age son wants to buy an XBox. What does it really cost (console + games + subscriptions +??)? And what do I need to know about it, as a parent? We don't own any consoles now, besides the RetroPi I put together.

He will spend his own money, and he expect there to be good deals on Black Friday. What's a good deal for a bundle?

Does he need anything besides the console? Is the $59/year XBox Live subscription enough, or are there add-ons? Are there different versions of the console itself?

Does anyone have good advice for managing gaming time (if the console is on a TV in the living room)? He swears he will delete all the games from his iPhone if he gets an XBox, which I have a hard time believing.

Are there any upsides to the family if this thing is in the house, like using it as a media player or something?

Thanks for any advice to this tech-savvy parent who is pig-ignorant about game console ownership!

posted by wenestvedt to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Best answer: It's another avenue you'll have to police, but having it in the family room is probably key.

Games are expensive, and I don't think the annual fee pays for any actual gaming content. Tier-1 releases are $60 new, but there's also always stuff on crazy sale you can get for next to nothing if you're willing to wait a bit. This is probably more palatable to me, a 48 year old, than to a teen who probably wants to compare notes with his friends on whatever the latest game is.

Still, if he's spending his own money, he'll quickly learn that $60 on a dud kind of stings.

You may or may not be aware that there is a voice chat feature in many games, and that truly reprehensible behavior predominates there in multiplayer games. Again, having him in the living room will have him on notice about his own language, but once the headset goes on just assume he's being bombarded by the worst 4Chan bullshit you can imagine.

He swears he will delete all the games from his iPhone if he gets an XBox, which I have a hard time believing.

Yeah, that's hilarious. Games on your phone are great for waiting in line or whatever, but they don't approach the immersive experience that a modern console offers. They're different venues.

Are there any upsides to the family if this thing is in the house, like using it as a media player or something?

With apps downloaded from the online repository, a modern Xbox can play video from Netflix and Amazon and etc., along with other sources, so yeah you might find it useful.

However, we use an AppleTV for that, and so have only rarely used the Xbox that way -- generally, only when there was something we wanted that the Xbox store had that Apple didn't. I think the last example was SlingTV.
posted by uberchet at 10:06 AM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

Best answer: 1. The deals are already known. Some of them are already live, and others may be difficult or impossible to actually obtain. He should probably just find a deal that is already live and buy it now, rather than waiting in line or constantly refreshing a page at midnight.

2. There are two versions of the XBox One - the S and the X. The S is essentially a remake of the original at a lower price, the X is an amped up version, mostly for 4K TVs and whatnot. All games work on all consoles. He is probably going to want at least one extra controller (~$60) and various other bells and whistles that are not essential. The only essential subscription is the XBox Live Gold you mention. Games cost $60ish for brand new, top name titles, but he can delve into a huge back catalog of used games for pennies on the dollar.

3. iPhone games and XBox games are different beasts. Phone games are generally so much more pick-up-and-play than console games, which require more of a time commitment. One major issue you may not be prepared for is that if he is online gaming with friends, there may be pressures to be gaming at certain specific times, when all of his friends are on together. He may also have a lot of pressure to not stop playing at a moments notice, if he is in the middle of some mission or raid. Up to you if you want to be a hard-ass about that sort of stuff.

4. It's got all your various streaming apps and whatnot and it plays DVDs and BluRays.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:11 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Games are awesome but can be addicting. The advice might skew a tad differently if he was 17 than say, 13. It depends on how strict you want to be about certain titles that are violence or law breaking heavy, such as Grand Theft Auto.


Some parents are a bit more on the lax side thinking that as long as homework and chores are done, they can game into the wee hours. Others set schedules for gaming and cutoffs mean right now kind of thing. I agree some games when playing online with or without friends you can't stop in the middle and just save the game and quit. And toxic chat can totally be a thing no matter the age.
posted by lunastellasol at 11:10 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

We use an inherited XBox (XBone, lol) as a media player for Netflix and Prime. I somehow ended up into XBox Live Gold, which has three free games a month, but there's plenty of sales on older stuff.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:15 PM on November 20, 2018

I find the XBox One user-interface maddening, and I've owned two previous generations of XBox. Is he sure he doesn't want a Nintendo Switch? That's what I'd swap mine for if I could.
posted by w0mbat at 12:19 PM on November 20, 2018

If you are not doing Microsoft Rewards get on there now and start earning points. If you keep up with it everyday, you can earn subscriptions to Xbox Live and Game Pass fairly easily. (I would also recommend looking into Game Pass as an alternative to spending a ton on games. It's great value for the money).
posted by Otis at 12:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Speaking to the possibility of games being addicting and taking up some or all time from other activities, in my experience and in my opinion, I'm sorry I did not start out with firm rules about use instead of realizing later that it was necessary when it was a punishment to add a boundary that should have been there from the start. I guess something like only so many hours on a school night or maybe not on school nights or only x # of school nights as long as all other homework and external commitments and home commitments are completed, only x # of free hours a weekend, say if there are 28 free hours in a weekend (minus 16 sleep hours), then only so many a day can be on xbox. Some kids don't need firm limits and some do. It can be devastating to find out that the only answer to "what do you like to do" is video games. The video game designers are very successful at maximizing the pleasure of the activity to where it becomes difficult to compete with real life especially with a brain that may not have fully-matured self-discipline to balance games with broader life goals.
posted by RoadScholar at 1:29 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: If he wants to play with friends at your house, you will definitely need another controller (and batteries!), so that's another $50. My number one rule with computer games is to make ground rules BEFORE they start playing (and make sure you are flexible to the situation).

Some points to ponder:
a) do you have another child in the house? if you do, it's going to be tricky to enforce that Teenager can play if Other Child cannot. Also not all games are appropriate for all age levels.
b) some games can be very addicting and all consuming. If he likes to play games like WoW (world of warcraft), he might tell you he's raiding at 10pm on a saturday night and he HAS TO DO IT. No, he doesn't have to do anything, he wants to do it.
c) I also want to emphasize just how bad the chatter is on the headsets. My kids aren't allowed on headsets at all unless it is on a channel strictly with their friends, they aren't allowed to do open play with the public.
posted by alathia at 1:58 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I would also suggest Xbox GamePass. It is $9.99 per month, but they have sales at random times. I got six months for $30 back in June.

GamePass lets you play over 100 different games and - this is key - it includes every first-party Microsoft game on the day it is released at no extra charge. So it includes the Halo games, Gears of War, etc., along with brand new games like Forza Horizon 4 (a car racing game), and upcoming titles like Crackdown 3, which comes out in February.

GamePass is the best bang for the buck on Xbox. Hands-down.
posted by tacodave at 3:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I have a PS4 so some slight differences. I have it in the living room and use it for watching netflix/prime/stuff from my plex server. The box should come with everything you need to get going (controller/cords/etc). As for the online services, that depends. If he wants to play online with friends, then it's a must. But if he's more into single player games, it's not necessary.

Upgrades to think about later on: an external hard drive. Games are big and it's easy to fill up the given hd space right quick. Maybe a headset, if it's in a family room. Split-screen coop is pretty rare these days, but there are a few games that still have it. If he likes those games, an extra controller is a must.
posted by lovecrafty at 5:25 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

The age of the teenager in question impacts this a lot, but you'll want to really investigate the exposure to strangers... not in a stranger danger way, but that the chats (voice and text) can be incredibly toxic. A 17-year-old might be able to handle it, but I would not put a 13-year-old in that space unsupervised.
posted by k8t at 6:38 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: 2. There are two versions of the XBox One - the S and the X. The S is essentially a remake of the original at a lower price, the X is an amped up version, mostly for 4K TVs and whatnot. All games work on all consoles. He is probably going to want at least one extra controller (~$60) and various other bells and whistles that are not essential. The only essential subscription is the XBox Live Gold you mention. Games cost $60ish for brand new, top name titles, but he can delve into a huge back catalog of used games for pennies on the dollar.

And for what it's worth, the S is sort of underpowered for this generation of games? The pixel counting wonks over at DigitalFoundry tend to suggest the systems stack up like Xbox One S, Playstation Slim, Playstation Pro, Xbox One X. That's probably fair enough. Now, does it really truly matter to a 13 year old? Eh, probably not. And I don't think anything has been gated off to the mid-generation upgrades yet (the Pro and X). But if he's not _particularly_ cost sensitive and a 4k display might be in the future, the X is probably the way to go in 2018.

I don't know if anyone has touched on the backwards compatibility catalogue, either. Even though you might not think it applies since you don't have an existing Xbox 360 library to bring along, it certainly helps provide a cheap base of new old stock 360 games from Gamestop and Amazon.

In any event, the current deals I'm seeing for the S are on the order of $200-$229 including a pack-in game. Minecraft at $200, Forza (racing)/Battlefield (FPS)/PUBG (battle royale) at $229. That's down $70-100 from list, so it's a fairly good deal but not a once yearly Black Friday only sort of deal. You just have to keep your eyes open.
posted by Kyol at 9:56 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]