Digital gifting is coming to both Xbox & Windows very soon

Game gifting is one of the highest requested features in Xbox history, and it’s going to be available – at the very least in preview – very soon. This news comes from a mixture of both Mike Ybarra (the Xbox Corporate Vice President) and our very own information, which helped us fill in a blank.

You can check out a video of a clip from the Xbox Q&A panel at PAX West below. The team is asked about the status of both wishlists & game gifting. Ybarra mentions that one of the two features is coming very soon, although they aren’t allowed to mention which one. The other feature is on “the list of things we need to get to”, meaning that it doesn’t seem to be in development at the moment.

We can confirm that text strings related to game gifting are currently in the Windows Store builds being sent out to Windows Insiders. These are related to both purchasing and accessing your gifts. There is nothing related to wishlist functionality – yet.

While we aren’t sure about exactly when gifting will become available, “very soon” means we won’t be waiting very long. Windows Insiders in Skip Ahead will likely be waiting even less than most Xbox Insiders – Xbox features like this are usually enabled on a per-build basis, while enabling it for Windows Insiders is as easy as an app flight.

Gifting also likely won’t be limited to games. Expect the ability to gift paid apps and potentially even movies and music, although we can’t confirm those two at the moment.

What will you buy your friends? Let us know in the Idea below!