Gifting a Gaming Console for Christmas? Update It First!

If the price drops on current-gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One caused you to buy one as a Christmas gift, you’re going to make someone very happy this holiday season!

What you might not know, however, is that hours of potential boredom might occur on Christmas day if you don’t take care of some logistics first.

Modern video game consoles are updated over the Internet, mostly to fix bugs and add new features. Because of this, your child won’t be able to just plug in their new Xbox One and start playing — it will first need to update, and this could take quite a while on Christmas when thousands of other families are doing the same thing.

Aside from console updates, games need to be updated too, and these can be a few gigabytes or more. It would be a shame to wait hours before seeing what’s new in Black Ops III because of a mountain of updates.

The age of your kids determines what you should do here. If your child is an older “gamer” and feels that the experience of setting up a new console is part of the charm, leave it be and let them deal with the updates.

Younger kids, however, won’t want to wait, so it’s a good idea to take the system out of the box, plug it in, and get it online so that you can apply the latest updates before you give it to them. Make sure to put in the discs for any new games so they update too!

Looking to do more preparation for your gifts? See how you can easily upgrade the PS4’s hard drive to get more space.

Will you update your gifted consoles early, or do your kids like doing it? Let us know your plans below!