With the carnage of Christmas morning starting to settle, the wrapping paper cleared away, and the eggnog out of your system, you may be looking up with dazed eyes and wondering what you should get for your new Xbox Series X or Series S.
Naturally, the first thing on the agenda should be games. Microsoft‘s console has an excellent library, and some of the best Xbox Series X games will push your machine to the limit, showing you what it can do. For my money, the newly released Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a late contender for game of the year, and it scratches both that first-person shooter and adventure game itch.
However, before you rush into a game-buying frenzy, take a moment and look through the list of recommended accessories below. They may not be games exactly, but these accessories offer ways to save you money and time and enhance the games you choose to play. A membership to Xbox Game Pass alone costs a third of the price of a single game and gives you access to a catalog of hundreds of titles to play.
Xbox Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass used to be an easy recommendation. As with the other platforms, you pay a monthly or annual subscription to access online multiplayer and a library of games. The Xbox Game Pass library is huge, containing hundreds of games – for an idea of the selection, these are the best Xbox Game Pass games. However, changes in the last year, such as Microsoft’s introduction of new Xbox Game Pass tiers, have made it a more convoluted service. It’s still good value for money, but slightly less so.
There are now three tiers of membership on the console: Xbox Game Pass Core, Xbox Game Pass Standard, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate:
- For $9.99 / £6.99 a month, Xbox Game Pass Core is the cheapest and lets you play a library of 25 games or so.
- For $14.99 / £10.99 a month, Xbox Game Pass Standard gets you access to the full game library.
- For $19.99 / £14.99 a month, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gets you everything in the Standard membership and day-one access to new first-party games. Your membership also lets you access a larger library on your PC and the ability to stream games from the cloud to save on installing them to your console. You’ll also gain access to EA Play, the publisher’s games library.
You’ll know which tier is best for you, but going straight to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, while it offers the best value for money, the Core library – which features Doom Eternal, Fallout 4, and Forza Horizon 4 – will keep many gamers entertained for months.
SteelSeries Arctis Nova7X
We often focus on the graphical advances in gaming, not noticing how developed the soundscapes have become. If you’ve bought an expensive television but not invested in a sound system to match, then this whole new world of audio will be locked away from you.
Buying one of the best soundbars can cost you a pretty penny (and it can only be enjoyed if there’s no one around who would be disturbed by the sound of realistic bullets zinging around your living room). One of the simplest ways to enjoy the aural leap is to invest in a good pair of wireless headphones.
While the official Xbox Wireless Headset is very good, we recommend the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X for the best Xbox headset. It costs more, but the gains in comfort and quality are worth it.
Xbox Wireless Controller
Now, this recommendation will depend on how much you want to see the disappointment in your friend’s eyes when you burn the onions in Overcooked. You can play many of the best co-op games available on Xbox, and many of them online, but you’ll only be able to play them side by side with a friend if you invest in a second controller.
The standard Xbox Wireless Controller is a great gamepad. It’s also regularly on sale during Black Friday events – it may even be in the post-Christmas sales right now. But, if you really want to treat yourself and make your co-op pal jealous, strongly consider an Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. The premium controller has a satisfying heft, loads of customization options, and offers a significant leap over the standard pad compared to the Sony equivalent. So you can feel smug in front of PS5 owners, too.
Going in the other direction, the 8BitDo Pro 2 Wired controller is a great option if you just want something cheap that does the job. Again, give this one to your guests to make your standard controller feel like an Elite in comparison.
Xbox Rechargeable Battery
While an Xbox Game Pass membership and a high-quality headset may open the door to new virtual worlds, and an extra gamepad will let you delight in those worlds with a friend, don’t snub your nose at this simpler recommendation. A rechargeable battery pack is one of the best things you can get for your new Xbox for absolute comfort and convenience.
An Xbox Rechargeable Battery slots into the back of your controller, enabling you to play your games all the way away on your sofa without needing a massive USB-C cable. You could buy a massive pack of AA batteries, but you will work through them, as your controller, while not a power hog, will eat up the charge over a few days. Just remember to plug the pack in to recharge when you’re not using it.
Seagate Xbox Storage Expansion Card
Depending on which console you’ve bought, your new Xbox Series X or S will have between 512GB and 2TB of internal storage. That is enough to install any game on the platform. Still, you may soon find yourself regularly deleting titles from your console to create space, especially as the operating system alone takes up 148GB.
If you consider that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is 85GB and Warzone is an additional 92GB, and many other AAA games are similarly large, it won’t take long to fill up your internal SSD. And, if you’re forever deleting and reinstalling games, you’ll spend hours waiting for games to redownload instead of playing them.
That’s why we recommend investing in a Seagate Xbox Storage Expansion card. You simply plug it into your console to instantly increase your machine’s storage space by 1TB.
Alternatively, you can buy a large external storage device. This is cheaper, but you can’t play games off the drive. Instead, you’ll have to transfer them to the internal drive first. This is often quicker than downloading the game again, but it’s less convenient than internal storage. With tested the best Xbox Series X hard drives and SSDs if you’d like a recommendation.
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Julian.benson@futurenet.com (Julian Benson)
