So I may be looking at an Xbox One going from my 360 and want to know what to look out for and what's best for my situation. I use a 19 inch screen, have intermittent or sometimes no Internet, and when I do it's slow. I though about the X being best, but then I thought that I may not be getting full advantage of it. I primarily will be playing WWE games and maybe Minecraft. Possibly COD. Only offline play also. How does it work in that respect considering my connectivity issues? What sort of things can I do with it without online access? Any other tips or advice would be great! Thanks! TG.
The Xbox One consoles will work offline once setup, however you do need an internet connection to set the console up with your Xbox Live profile. You can not create an offline account like on the 360. Something else to keep in mind is you will have to update the Xbox One to set it up, which could be a 4gb download. Game updates got stupid with the Xbox One, even if you buy a game on disc quite a few games only have half the game shipped on the actual disc so you need to update the game to get the rest of it / fix all the bugs with the launch version of the game. If you can take the Xbox One somewhere with good internet to set it up / update all your games you can happily play disc based games offline once setup and updated (or downloadable games you purchase). You will be in with a rubbish experience trying to set one up without a reliable connection sadly. The Xbox One X will play Xbox One games up to 4k, I have the OG Xbox One and that still plays most Xbox Game out today, granted some don't look that great now. The Series S is technically a better buy than the Xbox One or Xbox One X for 1080p gaming, however the console has no disc drive, so I would not be recommended it without a reliable internet connection. That is a current gen console backwards compatible with Xbox One games.
That's really helpful, thanks. What's the reason with the profile? Can't I just USB my 360 one over? Or what about just downloading it from their server from when I was on last, despite losing everything I've done since, but that's cool I guess. TG.
You can sign in to an existing profile saved on the Xbox servers no problem, that's what I did when I got my Xbox One. If you sign in to live on the Xbox 360 then go to Settings > Memory you will have the option to copy your existing save to the Xbox Cloud storage, doing this will allow any backwards compatible Xbox 360 games to use your saves on future Xbox consoles.
I don't think I should because of some games I've played recently are betas, etc, so will get flagged. If I just download the profile can I not just copy the saves over? Will any games just play out of the box? Like WWE 2K23? TG.
In that case do not go back online with that profile. To get any saves on the Xbox One you have to sync them via cloud storage on Xbox Live. Only thing you can do is delete the profile, recover the clean copy from Xbox Live then copy the existing saves to your cloud storage. By copying the saves however you risk mass unlocking achievements you don't have on the recovered profile, or possibly some achievements you shouldn't have before others. So if Microsoft still care about Gamerscore cheating then you could get flagged for that. Historically people have got reset and banned for that, I've no idea if they still care in 2023 however. As to what will play out the box i'm not sure. In theory a lot of games should, however some games were shipped unfinished on disc which is something to be wary of.
That might be the way to go I guess. Does the console have a file transfer system? I use Aurora and FSD daily for moving/renaming files that I have on my external Seagate hard drive. Also can the browser download files of any type like I would on my phone? Like torrents for example. TG.
The Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles were never hacked, so in some ways you are rather limited in what you can do with them. However the good news is they do support some UWP apps published on the Windows store. VLC UWP should play most of your media and I *think* can read USB drives. Kodi is another option for playing back media, I *think* later versions can read USB drives on the Xbox One, earlier versions had issues from what I remember. You can also use the Edge web browser, so you have a pretty capable web browser on the Xbox too. If you pay to enable Dev Mode on the Series S or X consoles than these are rather good at running UWP emulators as shown in the video below, the Xbox One / Xbox One X do not really have powerful enough processors however.
That's cool with Dev mode. Looks a bit confusing on setup, but worth it I guess. How does the Game Pass/Gold thing work? I won't be playing online, but want access to the Marketplace. I've read that any games you get won't work offline once a certain period of time runs out?! Can you explain a bit more in detail. I won't have online access for 99% of the time. TG.
Any games you buy outright on the marketplace will work offline if you have set the Xbox One as your home console. Any games downloaded from gamepass should work for 30 days when offline on your home console (I believe that's true, never actually tested it).
So it's like a rental thing really. How would the console know to stop a game working if I don't go online?
Pretty much, Game Pass is like the Netflix for games. DRM basically. The Xbox will know when you last connected to Xbox Live, so will know to expire the licence for the games if the console has not checked in with Xbox Live after a certain amount of time.
Ah OK. Cool. So best bet is try a game quickly and buy it cheap while it's available at a discount. I looked on the store site at Game Pass stuff and there seem to be some good deals. Does it include free Games with Gold? Are they the same or do you get to keep them regardless?
You get Xbox Live Gold with Game Pass, so can download the Games with Gold games. These are only playable when you have an Xbox Live Gold subscription (Or Game Pass as it includes gold) however. So technically you don't own them, but can also play them indefinitely, even if they are delisted providing you have an active Xbox Live or Game Pass subscription. They recently stopped giving away Xbox 360 games with Games with Gold, you could used to keep them even without any subscription which was nice, I ended up with digital copies of quite a few physical 360 games I own. FYI the best way to get cheap Game Pass if you have access to a VPN is to buy 3x years of Xbox Live Gold from a cheaper region such as Turkey, then buy one month of Game Pass Ultimate and it will convert to 3 years of Game Pass Ultimate. I believe this still works if you have no active Gold / Game Pass subscription what so ever and redeem on the Xbox website when connected to the VPN in the country you purchased from.
That's quite handy. Is Game Pass able to be cancelled at any time. As I don't know if I will have a connection to the Internet for long periods of time. Or on a monthly basis. TG.
If you are paying via credit card i believe you can cancel it and it will not renew the next month. If you are buying codes for it then it will run until the expiry date.
OK thanks. Do you know if I can transfer videos that I've downloaded onto the internal drive for playback or is it like the 360? TG.
Thanks. Does the console have a file transfer facility? I use my RGH alot for that so would like to be able to do that if possible. Maybe an app? TG.
Not by default, however they are a few File Manager type apps on the Windows Store that state they are compatible with the Xbox: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/adv-file-explorer-fulltrust/9NBNJPSXFSQB