In a tweet Mike Ybarra told a xbox fan that giving gifts digitally isn't far away.
Digital gifts have been a big thing on PC gaming for several reasons

1) Its awesome to give gifts or expensions/digital content to your friends and family
2) during price drops some websites purchase 100's of gifts to resell them later for a lower price then in the Steam Store (or in this case Xbox Store)

Source: https://www.xboxnederland.nl/nieuws/digitale-games-cadeau-is-binnenkort-mogelijk/?utm_source=headliner.nl&utm_medium=link&utm_term=free&utm_content=textlink&utm_campaign=Headliner.nl

I think Microsoft has been doing the best job the last few years of ramping up digital value. Digital gaming is the future and the best service/consumer friendly digital market will be a much bigger deal 2-3 years from now.

Something I miss from the Wii days. I wish more did this. Even Nintendo abandoned it.

Is there a reason companies don't like doing this? Is it for security reasons? Like for example, someone could get hold of your account and gift loads of games to other people? Steam does it obviously but there is no reason really the consoles can't.

Maybe with a gift always have added security and or it can't use wallet funds without valid proof you are you.

Good old Games, Humble Bundle, Steam they all have huge benefits from gift giving but its something that has been more restricted to the PC scene. I would be suprised if Nintendo and Sony don't also offer it at some point.

It was always one of them that has to show its a very good thing, they will make a lot of money from people during sales and also cosmetic items and expensions as a gift to a family member is just great because you usually can't get them in store.

Until digital games can be freely sold secondhand, receive the same massive price drops 2-3 years down the line AND freely traded back and forth as many times as you want between different people, physical will live on. They want all of us to go 100% digital so we can no longer resell our games and also because they want to dictate the price with total authority. It's not in our interest as consumers and it's best if there is both a physical and digital option.

Nintendo used to on Wii.

They haven't adopted the refunds thing that Steam uses yet, which seems successful. Which is sad for me, someone who doesn't like the idea of buying a digital game only to find out it sucks arse but you are stuck with it. 

But gifting seems like something easily done. Can't gift people aren't friends for more than a week maybe. Then they never mention why gifting isn't done, unless they just want you to buy the £20 gift card for the £15.99 game instead of just buying the £15.99 game. :P

Microsoft did adopt the refunding in their own way, its the best out there for console owners by a landslide at least.

• Games and apps are eligible for self-service refunds within 14 days of purchase if you have less than 2 hours of play time across all accounts.

Full Source: https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/12/15278156/xbox-one-refunds-windows-store-games-apps

Oh cool, that's very recent, which is why I probably didn't notice. Maybe Sony will take note now.

Thats the complete idea of competition to make eachoter better :)