Microsoft has quietly killed off its offer of a cheaper Xbox 360 console when bought with a two-year Xbox Live subscription.

The US-only deal began around two years ago and allowed you to pick up a new Xbox 360 console and Kinect for just $99.

But the offer was never rolled out internationally and was actually taken off the market for new customers last year, Wall Street Journal has now reported.

"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," Microsoft spokesperson David Dennis said.

Early reports suggested Microsoft initially considered making the Xbox One available under a similar pricing structure - but the idea never saw light of day.

Like a mobile phone contract the offer would have allowed users to purchase the console at a significantly reduced amount, although the total cost would be more over the lifetime of the offer - and there would be fees for cancelling your contract early.

source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-14-microsoft-quietly-ends-xbox-subscription-offer

so we can say this subscription model failed, which is probably a good thing since the end result was the consumer ended up paying more (if i remember correctly)

Or they only plan to support live on 360 for 2 more years so they have to cut it off now.

$14.99 a month for 2 years and a one-off $99 down payment. $458.76 seems pretty high for an Xbox 360.

Glad it did fail, if that's the case.

wut?

As long as the option to buy the console fully upfront is always there, I wouldn't call the removal of this option a good thing for consumers. Yes it's more expensive in the long run but for some people, this is an easier and appreciated option for payment.

Hopefully this means that gamers aren't really all that dumb.

Thing is tho, if you were going to buy an xbox360 chances are you would want xboxlive gold with it anyway so this was just a cheaper way of getting that.

They probably quietly canned it because it wasn't doing them any favours just giving out cheaper systems where people who are buying new xbox's would be buying a live sub as well.

typical MS