As the holidays fast approach, there is always the rush of trying to think of that perfect gift for those who mean something to you.

X might give it to you, but the Series X console is a hard ticket to find, but Xbox is in a unique spot as almost all the games on the new platforms have last-gen versions as well, that you can upgrade to for free, excluding any sports title really. That means for almost all the games down below, if you buy it, you can get it for both generations of platforms from Microsoft, the only two exceptions are Call of Duty that requires you buy a special version or Mass Effect, which doesn’t have a next-gen optimised version.

Xbox Series X

The new king of hardware from Xbox, this console is a sleek black tower that will let you play anything from your existing library of games, meaning all those free games from the Games with Gold collection, or your old disc based library will work. The best news is that all the old hardware works, in fact if your games are on an external drive from the Xbox One generation, you just need to plug it in and you are good to go.

EB Games

Forza Horizon 5

If you grew up playing any sort of arcade racer, then there is a fair chance you know the Forza Horizon series, the latest entry takes place in the country of Mexico and combines the best of all the games before it. Letting you just get in a car and drive, or deep dive into the mechanics for those fractions of seconds in improvement, the game really is about letting you enjoy the game however you want.

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Far Cry 6

Throw a player into an open world, give them plenty of guns and let them loose, that is the basis of Far Cry, but with the sixth mainline entry, they left the religious nutjob behind and went for something more sophisticated. While the series has been known to have intense villains, this entry has passion behind him and a desire to leave a legacy for his son. Of course, you can always ignore that and take your alligator pal into camps and lay waste to soldiers there, if you want a change of pace.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator

This is one of the longest running game series around and while it had been a few years since the last big release, the PC release happened this year, but now it came to console. You can approach this as a basic flying game, soaring above the world in incredible detail, but if you are someone who can’t wait to take flight in a real plane, this might be the closets you can get, for me, I still have to work on taking off.

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Call of Duty Vanguard

The latest entry in the Call of Duty series, Vanguard is delivering three unique modes at launch, a campaign, zombies and of course iconic CoD multiplayer. If you know the person you are buying for, likes shooters, this is one you can’t really pass on it, there is a lot of game here, if they however don’t like the series, this won’t change their mind, but hey, it looks really amazing on next gen.

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Guardians of the Galaxy

This is without a doubt, one of my most fun games released this year, I knew little going in and could not stop playing once I did, it had fun, it had heart and it had a rockin soundtrack. This is a single player adventure though, so be warned on that, but if you are looking to give someone a great time, this is one game that will easily get you there, even if you need a space llama to do it.

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Mass Effect Legendary Edition

One of the older games on the list, not because it was released back in the first quarter, but because it is a remaster of Xbox 360 games, the Legendary Edition offers up an insane amount of content. Not only is there three massive RPG’s to play, the choices that you make as you play, not only impact how you are seen by folks, but will even provide more choice, or less, within your own team.

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Xbox Series S

Out of four next-gen consoles that launched last year, this is the only one with stock around the place and that is likely due to the lack of a disc drive. The Series S model of the Series X is the same internals, but with two differences, the first is that it won’t do 4K video and the second and likely more important, there is no disc drive meaning all games must be bought digitally. Though if you wanted, a monthly subscription to Xbox Game Pass, can make that point moot.

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So those are some of our suggestions for the Xbox fan in your life, but there are even more games to choose from, like we said at the end Xbox Game Pass is a great way to get games and all first party titles, including Forza Horizon and Microsoft Flight Simulator are included within, look for more on that later in the series.