XBox Setup for a NOOB

XBox Game Pass.

You should sign up for "Gold" first and then "upgrade" to Game Pass for $1. It will convert every month of Gold you signed up for into Ultimate and will save you money. You can get up to 3 years of Game Pass for a much cheaper rate this way. You just have to be sure you prepay for as many months of Gold as you want for Game Pass.

Here's an article about it because I'm sure my explanation was confusing. That article has a step by step guide on how to do it.

If I were you, I'd get the full 3 years. It's totally worth it. All Microsoft-developed games are included with Game Pass on day of release, so Halo is already on there. It also currently comes with EA Play.

I would also recommend getting an external hard drive to store the games you aren't playing at the moment. Otherwise you're going to run out of space on that thing rather quickly.

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Is there a particular hard drive that's needed or any will work? Also, if a game is stored on a hard drive, can it be used on another xbox plug and play?

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At the same time, or separately?

I know for a fact you can play it on a different console while it's not being used on another console. I've never had a game I owned going on two consoles at the same time, but my understanding is that is possible. My kids tried this with Minecraft but that game apparently doesn't allow that to happen.

If you are going to use two consoles at the same time, you'll need to set up your "main" account that is attached to Game Pass as the "home" console on one of them and then use a different account (no need to pay anything else) to play the Game Pass games owned by the "main" account on that console. You'll then set up the second console as the "home" console for a different XBox account (again, no need to pay anything else) and log in to the "main" account on that console to play the Game Pass games on that one. Sounds complex when explained, but it really isn't.

Here's a YouTube video that explains this better.

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Is there a particular hard drive that's needed or any will work?

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Any external hard drive will work, but you'll need to transfer newer games to the Series S's drive when you play them. They just work better that way. There is an XBox-specific storage drive you can purchase that extends the memory of the box directly, but honestly it's too expensive for my tastes and transferring games from the storage space to the box when I want to play them has been pretty seamless so far.

I use a Seagate 10TB hard drive, but really a 4TB would work for most people. Even a 2 TB would likely work if you're not going to store games on it indefinitely. Microsoft gives away 4 games for free every month with the Gold subscription, and I've been storing those for years so I already have a 4 TB filled and am working on a 10 TB now.

ETA: When you plug in a new drive the XBox will format it for you. Make sure you DON'T select the option that is for storing music, videos, and pictures. Choose the other one.

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I also saw something called EA-Play.

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EA play is included with Gamepass so dont sign up for that separately

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First time xbox owner (xbox series s)

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