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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?

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The page you have linked to shows only recent activity - at least one of my friends have Portal 2 and is not shown there. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything like what you ask, unless you count services that track your playtime, but then your friends would need to use those services. – Wilerson Oct 1 '12 at 20:40
@Wilerson: That's unforunate. I know it must exist in their database somewhere. Depending on how open their database is to queries it could be doable in an add-in but it'll be a challenge. – fezir108 Oct 1 '12 at 20:59

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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.

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TA is definitely the best way imho to track your friends' games. If some of your friends do not have TA accounts, you can still add them as non-TA friends and TA will track them for you (but only update once a week; still better than nothing). One caveat is if your friend has their privacy settings turned right up, then TA won't be able to track them. – deutschZuid Oct 2 '12 at 2:22
This definitely seems like the best way, I just hate that I have to buy a pro account to add more than 3 non-registered friends. – fezir108 Oct 2 '12 at 12:55
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Via XBox Live you can Compare Games. It will show achievements for games that you or your friend have played. In my experience this will indicate 0 (or more) Gamerscore if your friend has played the game and "--" if they have not played it. If your friends have Gamefly or turn over games quickly, this may not be such a good indicator, but really it's the best information you can get without actually talking to your friends.

If you don't want to be tethered to your Xbox, you can also use an app like this one .

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