> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!!

As a fellow minecraft Dad (who hasn't yet purchased Dungeons...looks cool but Create mod is the current addiction), pro tip - don't give a small child a gift you haven't confirmed is ready to go yet.

There are times when it's good to teach a kid patience, how to assemble and adjust the derailleur on a bicycle, or how to install software updates, or how to configure port forwarding for a server, or how to safely charge and maintain lipo batteries, or whatever...but the start of limited screen time on the weekend, or Christmas morning unwrapping presents, or their birthday party with everyone watching....that is not the time. It's definitely not the time to find out that the new gadget is dead-on-arrival and teach them about the RMA process.

Kids don't care if the shrink wrap is not intact or if it doesn't have that "new car" plasticizer smell, they just want to play with it. And if you can keep them from getting addicted to peeling off the clear membrane from a glossy new gadget, later they'll be more open to the possibility of more frugal used goods.

If the gift needs to be on the kid's account, how would you ensure it was 'ready to go' before christmas day, without the kid being able to see it on their account, getting a bunch of notifications etc?

The is a reason that Santa only comes when the kids are quite and in bed in my house, and it also explains why my dad was always tired in the morning growing up

In some countries, gifts are exchanged on christmas eve

Most of the countries actually

I don't get the correlation between Santa coming and your dad being tired, did they have dinner together?

As a dad, I'm assuming it was because mom and dad were up late building the treehouse, assembling the bike, etc.

i still don't get why they would have to do that, if Santa brought the presents already

The presents don't always come assembled.

I got into Minecraft a bit later, and when I purchased it, I got the Windows 10 Edition. I had to have a Microsoft account to play, so I was already set. Minecraft: Dungeons is a completely separate game, more of an isometric perspective. It looks fun, was just hoping that I didn't have to buy it myself until I had a PC to start playing on.

> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.

I wish this was true for me. My experience was after Microsoft extorted my phone number out of me (for 'verification' of my 10 year old account that I converted) that it now demands a text message 2FA authentication any time I haven't played for awhile. Which since my kids are usually the ones playing means they're usually blocked from starting up again unless I'm home. Which means they kind of just don't play it anymore.

I never wanted a Microsoft account in the first place and I want one even less now.