It seems to be that everyone is introducing a rewards program of some sort to help save you money. Best Buy has its Reward Zone program; several restaurants have a “buy X number of dishes, get the Y one free”; and GameStop has a new Power Up Rewards set-up. Now Microsoft is getting into the swing of things with a newly launched Xbox LIVE Rewards program, designated to give you rewards for simply buying games, marketplace goods, Xbox LIVE services and other goods. Here’s the breakdown of how it works. To get started you need to head over to the official Xbox Live Rewards website (http://rewards.xbox.com) and sign in using your Xbox LIVE Gamertag. If you don’t have one, you can easily sign up for one after getting an Xbox Live account. From there, points automatically accumulate depending on what you buy.
Here are the official Xbox LIVE Gold membership rewards:
- Xbox LIVE 1 Month Gold Membership = 10 Microsoft points
- Xbox LIVE 3 Month Gold Membership = 30 Microsoft points
- Xbox LIVE Online Gold Membership (initial purchase or renewal) = 100 Microsoft points
- Xbox LIVE 12 Month Gold Membership = 200 Microsoft points
- Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack Membership Plan (initial purchase or renewal) = 400 Microsoft points
If you’ve already got your membership set to go, you can still earn points in other ways:
- Taking a quick survey on the Xbox LIVE Rewards page (one per month) = 20 Microsoft points:
- Featured Xbox LIVE Marketplace Content = 40 Microsoft points (this month features the Pinball FX 2 add-on pack, through December 31
- First time Marketplace purchase = 100 Microsoft points
- Activation or use of Netflix new features = 100 Microsoft points
Points add on to your account once the rewards are earned and validated, and you can use them for future purchases. Furthermore, you earn the opportunity to win cool prizes every time you play Xbox Live-supported games, including a Bose Home Theater (estimated at $500), a 50” high-definition television, an Xbox 360 Kinect bundle, a Windows Phone 7, and various Xbox Live prizes, including memberships. The grand prize is a home theater system, which retails for three grand. Instant win prizes are also available, including an Xbox Live Arcade game, movie rentals, Avatar goods and a year of Xbox Live membership. And you can enter daily. So far, the program hasn’t really accumulated points for what we’ve done yet, but we’re figuring it takes a couple of days for these to register, so we should be seeing progress on our account soon enough. Head on over to Microsoft Rewards, register, and get ready to earn some mad points!
