Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, announced this morning that the subsidized $99 Xbox 360 will be coming to Best Buy and GameStop stores later this month. Hyrb, a member of the Xbox team at Microsoft and former host of the recently cancelled Major’s Minute Inside Xbox show, announced the expansion of the $99 Xbox program over on his blog. From the blog post:
Today, I’m happy to announce that we’re expanding the pilot to all U.S. Best Buy stores and select GameStop locations later this month. This next phase of the pilot program will be limited in terms of both timing and the number of units available—we’re excited to forge new ground and explore a new retail model for Xbox 360, but also want to emphasize that this is a pilot period for the program.
Microsoft announced the subsidized $99 Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle one month ago, and began selling the consoles in Microsoft Stores around the country. To purchase the bundle for $99, customers must commit to a subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE service for 2 years at a price of $15 per month. A normal subscription for Xbox LIVE is $60 for one year, making the normal price for the service $5 per month. Still, this deal might end up being cost effective for consumers who find it hard to save up hundreds of dollars at a time for a videogame console. Though Hyrb emphasizes that the bundle is only a pilot program, this could end up being the future of how video game consoles are bought.