Microsoft wants you to buy an Xbox One S or Xbox One X one month at a time, but the terms are much more generous than you’d think. For Microsoft, the value lies in the future.
Microsoft has created the Xbox All Access subscription because it has to; this isn’t the action of a company that’s winning the console race. But let’s set that aside for a moment, because this is actually a really good deal for anyone who wants to get into the Xbox ecosystem.
The total cost of the Xbox One X hardware, along with two years of Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass, is $859.93, assuming no other bundles or sales on the subscriptions. Using this deal, you’ll end up paying $839.76 across two years of $34.99 payments. It’s like Microsoft is offering you $20 in savings if you accept zero-interest financing.
The Xbox One S deal is even better, costing $527.76 across two years for $659.93 worth of hardware and subscriptions. You’re saving about $132 — 20 percent of the total cost — by accepting free financing.
There’s no reason not to buy an Xbox One in this way, if you were already going to pay for both Gold and Game Pass. This isn’t a lease — you get to keep the hardware at the end of the two years, the same way modern smartphone financing works. There’s no downside as long as you don’t fail the initial credit check.
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So why is Microsoft paying you $20 to accept free financing of a console and two online services? Because the company has to do something to sell hardware, and the overall value of having more people on the Xbox platform — perhaps buying even more games — is worth it to the company. The goal is to have a larger base of people using Microsoft’s hardware and services, which helps the company in a number of ways.
This deal also makes the idea of signing up for Game Pass more appealing, and subscription-based consoles are a future that Microsoft very much likes to think about. Everyone wants to get their gaming subscription service as popular as possible as quickly as possible, because they know that players have an upper limit of how many services they will sign up for. Having an existing service that has been used and tested by a large amount of people also helps any company moving in that direction with the next console. This is part of a longer-term play.
So as part of a land-grab for players, anyone added to the service is more than worth the deferred revenue from players who may not have bought the system any other way.
The good news is that this is all good news: Microsoft’s interests and players’ interests align. If you don’t want an Xbox One, no sweat! If you want to pick one up and pay the retail price upfront, that’s still an option! But if you want to pay for the system and its services across two years, and save some money while you’re at it, there’s now an option to do so. There don’t seem to be any hidden gotchas here; just an easy way to pick up the current reigning console champion for 4K gaming and media.
