You Can Now Buy the $99 Xbox 360 In Places Other Than Microsoft's Barely Existent Stores

ill make it easy me & you smart, people that buy and fall for this dumb

I don't get why people are so upset about this. It's a payment plan. Of course things cost more in the long run on a payment plan. Things cost more when you carry a balance on your credit card too, and people (unadvisedly) do that ALL THE TIME. Hell, there are plenty of people who can't even afford the yearly XBL Gold price up front, so they're stuck paying monthly. Yes, it's borderline unbelievable that people can't save up $60, but it happens. For some people, rightly or wrongly, it's more about cashflow than overall cost. If you don't think it's a good deal, don't buy it. But it's not some tremendous ripoff. It's $40 over two years above the regular price.

@Alex said:

@Dany: You can usually get the Gold Cards for less than full retail price. Amazon, for instance, has them for $49. http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-LIVE-Month-Gold-Membership-360/dp/B0029LJIFG/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1336412301&sr=1-1

Of all the scams Microsoft pulls, the best has to be convincing the world they got a deal on something they shouldn't be paying for to begin with...

i am with JETHUTY and raise him. shut up in your face.

You to can get ripped off 

I know there's always a comment about Alex's headlines, but goddamn if he doesn't make himself known.

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

@Dany said:

Gold is $60 a year, so shouldn't it be $420 paying upfront?

ZING!

Wouldn't be an Alex article without snark in the title.

Any words about Canada?

@TwoSe7enFive said:

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

@Alex Don't listen to this person, they are obviously crazy.

Why would I pay $450 for something that can be bought for $250 from the same store? If you are really in the position where you can not afford to plop down $250 and have to finance that small sum of money over 2 years... then you should not be investing in a video game console in the first place... play all the F2P games on the PC. Or even better... find a better paying job.

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

@TwoSe7enFive said:

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

Snark is all Alex does. Without snark, I think he would cease to exist. I look at it this way: It makes me appreciate the articles written by Patrick all that much more.

Microsoft should have probably done this in the first place since there aren't that many MS stores around. I would have also expected a price cut or something instead of this strange deal.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

It's not the price of the box that's stopping me, Microsoft, it's you charging for your online service.

yes, this. Maybe if they offered some bonus software with their service like playstation + does, that would make it better. As is, I don't understand why anyone would pay for XBL gold.

@zanshin said:

Finally!

You sound like you've been waiting a long time for this new $99 deal. I'm glad you're clearly excited about this specific piece of news.

@TwoSe7enFive said:

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

What are you talking about?

It's really such an odd deal. If your financial situation doesn't allow you to buy a system up front at full cost, I can't imagine being able to populate that system with actual games or services.

This definitely looks to be a sort of experiment; a slightly troubling experiment.

I'm really curious to see how this plays out. I could see myself going this route with the next line of consoles if it makes sense at the time.

Yeah we get it, it's a terrible deal for most people. But @Alex maybe try writing with less snark once and a while.

@Dany: You can usually get the Gold Cards for less than full retail price. Amazon, for instance, has them for $49. http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-LIVE-Month-Gold-Membership-360/dp/B0029LJIFG/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1336412301&sr=1-1

It's not the price of the box that's stopping me, Microsoft, it's you charging for your online service.

Gold is $60 a year, so shouldn't it be $420 paying upfront?

Hopefullly I'll be able to buy the Surface elsewhere, too

Finally!

Hey, remember when Microsoft announced that super weird $99 Xbox 360 deal that required purchasers to sign up for a two-year contract with a $14.99 monthly fee, like you were buying some kind of gigantic cell phone? And then they made the deal only available through one of the handful of existing Microsoft branded stores? If you don't remember what I'm talking about, I probably sound like a lunatic right now. But I assure you, it happened.

Now, Microsoft has brought that same deal to participating GameStop and Best Buy locations. According to Major Nelson, the deal officially launches at those retailers today, so if you want to get up on this right now, you theoretically could.

As I've mentioned before, however, the math doesn't necessarily work out in your favor on this one. The contract includes a 4GB Xbox 360, Kinect, and two years of Xbox Live Gold. With the $99 up front and the $14.99 monthly charge, that equates to about $460 total spent over the two years. You can get all that same equipment and two years of Xbox Live for roughly $399 nowadays. Of course, the idea here is to give those who can't afford the up-front investment a way to enjoy a new Xbox, but if you're the sort who enjoys not paying more money for things than they're worth, maybe skip this whole deal.