Xbox One “pre-owned fee” may be full retail price

Yep, there’s even more Xbox One news to share. Earlier today we learned about the fee that would allegedly be applied to the installation of pre-owned games, which immediately led to one question: “How much?” Well according to Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison’s comments to Kotaku, it may be full retail price. The Kotaku report reveals that, as previously suspected, Xbox One games will be sold with single-use codes that must be activated online to link the game to your Live account. Other users on the same console can also play the game, but a fee will be applied to installations on other consoles. From Kotaku:

But what if you want to bring a game disc to a friend’s house and play there? You’ll have to pay a fee—and not just some sort of activation fee, but the actual price of that game—in order to use a game’s code on a friend’s account. Think of it like a new game, Harrison says.

“The bits that are on that disc, you can give it to your friend and they can install it on an Xbox One,” he said. “They would then have to purchase the right to play that game through Xbox Live.”

“They would be paying the same price we paid, or less?” we asked.

“Let’s assume it’s a new game, so the answer is yes, it will be the same price,” Harrison said.

Ouch. So are used games on the Xbox One dead on arrival? Maybe not. Harrison also told Kotaku that Microsoft has plans for a “solution” that would allow you to “trade your previously-played games online”. Presumably the game would be permanently removed from your own account before it could be transferred to another. Hopefully we’ll get more details on that soon.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: