$99 Xbox Console + Subscription - Feature Creep Episode 5 by Tarmack
5My phone is off contract. It's an iPhone 4s and the choice to go off contract was very much intentional which meant paying a significant amount of money on the phone for the benefit of being able to swap SIM cards and carriers as I see fit. A frustrating situation because the default state is with a contract, not the other way around which is a very odd business model for a consumer product. Xbox 360 is getting a new subscription model. Pay $99 and sign a 2 year $14.99 per month contract. You get a 4GB XBox 360, Kinect and Xbox live for 2 years. There is good in this because consoles are expensive for many people and Xbox live is underutilized given the number of Xbox consoles in use right now. It allows for people who may not be able to afford a new console to pick on up reasonably cheap. Those who could have afforded the full price console might sign a contract so they could spend more money on games which is also a great thing. So what happens if you miss your payments? Well they've not announced anything but obviously you would lose your Xbox live access. It does seem unlikely that Microsoft will send men to your house to repo the xbox though like most rent to own places do. This means that the subscription concept so late in the Xbox 360 lifecycle is a test bed. The market is being examined and payment/billing/technical support issues are being fleshed out. Because when the Xbox 720 comes out they'll want all of those things to be feature complete so a subscription model can be used on the next generation. That also means that the Xbox 720 has little to no chance of working without an always on internet connection, because if you signed a contract and those payments are late, they will want to have a way to temporarily brick your console. Which sucks for those who don't want a subsidized console.
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