We just got Tom his first Laptop for his 11th birthday. He's going to secondary school in September so will need one for his homework, plus I think it's time he has his own proper computer now.
When setting it up for him I added Microsoft 365 (Office 365) as I have the family plan. This was straight forward. From my Microsoft account I already had everyone in the family added to my account, so the 365 subscription auto linked to those in my family list.
But I also have Xbox Gamepass Ultimate which you can share with up to 6 friends. But I just couldn't work out how to do this. Initially I assumed it was like Microsoft 365, auto linking family members in my account as my Xbox Gamepass and Microsoft Store/PC accounts are the same. But no. When I logged into Tom's account in the Laptop and went to Xbox it showed him as not being a Gamepass member.
Installing games on this PC from my Ganepass account, and then switching to Tom's account they are not visible. After much searching I discovered a silly requirement needed for this to work. Even when Tom is logged into the laptop with his account, I then have to log into the Microsoft Store. Then when you load the Xbox app it shows Tom's gamertag wirh Gamepass Ultimate under it.
Installing games that have already been installed in my account show as needing to be installed again in his account, but picking to install only takes seconds as it seems to be sensible enough to realise a copy is already installed for a different syatem account and just links and uses the same files.
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He had no idea he was getting one for his birthday. And he downplayed his excitement when he opened it, but he was secretly very excited.
We only got him a fairly budget one that had good reviews for student use, including a robust case and hinge. It's an HP with a 14" screen, AMD Ryzen 5, 8GB ram and a 256GB SSD. Running Windows 11. Many of the cheaper laptops still only had 4GB which I wasn't going to waste money on.
Regarding Gamepass Ultimate. It was 4, but they recently upped it to 6. Does seem a lot and it lets everyone play the same games and multiplayer at the same time. No wonder Xbox is losing so much ground to Playstation. But at the same time it's great value if you have a family as you don't need to buy multiple copies of the same game.
He was desperate to play the new Minecraft Legends, and that was a day one release on there this month so he's really pleased about that. If you haven't tried Legends take a look. It's a fun realtime action stategy game based in the Minecraft world but using a 3rd person perspective. And it's not a block building game, although there is some crafting that feels more similar to Dragon Quest Builder 2.
I still much rather prefer Playstation though. Only use Gamepass on PC and Steam Deck.
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