For example, I want to buy Portal 2. When I look up Portal 2 on Steam, it tells me which of my friends already own it, which is tremendously helpful. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to do that on Xbox.com.
I've noticed that you can see game activity by going to http://live.xbox.com/en-US/Activity/Details?titleId=xxxxxxxxxx where the Xs represent a title ID. There isn't any easy way to look that title ID up either. Here is the link to Portal 2: https://live.xbox.com/en-US/Activity/Details?titleId=1161890066. I can't seem to go there unless I own the game, which kind of defeats the purpose. Even weirder: When I am on the Social page on Xbox.com I can see my friends' activity and click on a game I don't own to see who does own it. That's exactly what I want to accomplish but it only seems to work with games popular enough to make that list.
I feel like this may need a custom-coded solution (maybe a Chrome add-in or a Greasemonkey script) and unfortunately it'd be pretty far down on my to-do list. Does anyone else have any ideas?
Best Answer
You can't via official means. MS has no way of telling who owns a game, but they will tell you who played it recently on the activity pages, as you mentioned.
Your best bet is viewing your Home page for games popular with your friends. Some of my friends show under "recently played" even though it has been 46 days since their last sign-in. This doesn't help your "particular game" situation.
Alternatively, you can use a service like TrueAchievements (or another Xbox achievement tracker), add your friends, and you'll see their achievement progress on any game's page sidebar, which would indicate that they have played the game at some point.