14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Microsoft in charge of the older Xbox 360 has ended an offer that allowed users to pick up a console for cheap as long as they were willing to sign up for a two-year subscription to the Xbox Live Gold service.
The deal was only offered in the United States and was first introduced in 2012, allowing players to get a home console for just 99 dollars (74 Euro) at participating retailers.
Those who took advantage of it and then tried to cancel the Xbox Live subscription had to pay a special fee.
It’s unclear how many customers took advantage of the offer and the fact that Microsoft has quietly shut down the entire project probably means that it did not generate a big number of sales.
Dennis David, a spokesperson for the company, is quoted by Eurogamer as saying that, “This program was intended to be a pilot experiment from the start, and Microsoft routinely adjusts the mix of offers available to its customers and this change was simply standard business practice.”
The cheaper Xbox 360 with the attached Live Gold subscription was seen as a good way to help potential buyers get past the sticker price of the device.
At one point, rumors suggested that Microsoft was also interested in giving away the console for free as long as gamers were ready to pay a monthly fee for an expanded set of online services.
The idea was to create a shift towards a new business model for home consoles and attract a larger number of gamers.
The model is similar to that used by mobile phone companies to sell their products, basically subsidizing the hardware in order to make money from services and the sale of software.
When the Xbox One was first announced, rumors suggested that the company was interested in selling its next-gen console for a lower upfront price as long as gamers were willing to commit to long-term use of the Live service.
Microsoft did not implement the new business model, probably because of the worse than expected performance of the initiative for the Xbox 360.
At the moment, the Microsoft next-gen platform is behind the rival PlayStation 4 from Sony in terms of sales and analysts have suggested that the company needs to cut the price of the device in order to make it more attractive in the long term.