Eric Ravenscraft
When you go to your cell carrier, they’ll give you an expensive phone up front and let you pay monthly for it for two years. Now, Microsoft might be considering the same kind of deal for an Xbox One.
According to information obtained by Windows Central, Microsoft is currently working on a way to reduce the sticker shock of buying a console. The program is reportedly called Xbox All Access and it would come bundled with Xbox Live Gold, which lets you play online and gives you a few free games every month, and Xbox Game Pass, which is a monthly subscription that gives you access to over a 100 games.
The plan would reportedly cost around $22 a month for an Xbox One S over two years, which would total about $528. For an Xbox One X, you’ll pay $35 a month, which comes to $840 over two years. In both cases, you would own the console outright when your contract is up.
The prices are fairly reasonable, if not much of a discount. An Xbox One S starts at around $300. If you’re savvy and look for the best deals on Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass, you can get each one for around $60 a year, which would make the two year total for both subscriptions together around $240. That puts the normal two year total for an Xbox One S with both subscriptions at around $540. You save twelve bucks over two years, but only if you wanted both subscriptions to begin with. On the other hand, if you hate deal hunting and usually pay the $15 a month for Xbox Live Gold then this builds the discount right into the cost of the console for you.
The Xbox One X plan doesn’t sound like quite as good of a deal. The console starts at $500 and, again, the two combined services cost $240 if you get them on the best deals we usually see them. So you’d save $100 by buying your console outright and shopping around for subscription deals. That being said, Xbox Live Gold costs $15 a month and Game Pass costs $10 a month if you’re not deal hunting (which you should be). The two would normally cost $600 over two years if you’re paying month to month, so you get most of the savings you’d get by deal hunting with this plan. The convenience of one plan and no scrounging for deals might be more appealing to some than saving every penny.
None of this information is confirmed by Microsoft just yet, and it could change before launch or the company might scrap the launch altogether. Or someone at the company could’ve leaked information about it in order to gauge interest, so let’s help them out. Would you consider buying a console on a monthly plan with a two-year contract like you do with your cell phone? Or would you rather pay up front and do your own deal hunting on subscriptions?
Source: Windows Central via CNET
