As reported last week on the Xbox Wire, Microsoft is now enticing potential Xbox One players this week by offering a free game whenever you buy an Xbox One from September 7th through the 13th.
With Destiny arriving on store shelves tomorrow, things are heating up as retailers release their own variants of the "Buy Xbox One, Get Free Game" promotion while riding the Destiny marketing train.
Microsoft Store
Over at the official storefront, you can grab an Xbox One for $399.99 and receive a free game for your trouble. What's more, Microsoft is tossing in an additional free $50 Xbox gift card, good for any digital purchase with your Xbox account.
This means you can use the $50 value of the gift card to nearly cover the cost of a digital copy of Destiny Standard Edition or the Destiny Digital Guardian Edition. Alternately, you can wait until tomorrow's release, as Destiny will no longer be a pre-order; after that, the physical game will qualify for the free game promotion.
The $50 Xbox One gift card will be emailed to you or provided to you as a code if you opt to take up this offer at your local Microsoft Store. On the online store, there are currently 38 games available in the offer. As of writing, 34 of those games are in stock, with the more popular titles out of stock.
NewEgg
Next in line is a solid deal offered by NewEgg through their eBay storefront, but with limited quantity – apologies in advance if this is sold out.
NewEgg adds a spin to the free game offer by giving you an Xbox One with Kinect and Forza 5 bundle for $499.99 while also giving you a FREE copy of Destiny along with a FREE 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription card.
With this particular deal, you're essentially receiving $180 in additional value through the bonus included games plus subscription card. Normally this $499.99 price tag only gets you the standard Xbox One with Kinect, sans bonuses. Not a bad deal at all. For this offer, sales tax is limited to CA, IN, NJ, and TN. Shipping is also relatively fast with delivery estimate of on or before Friday, September 12.
GameStop / Best Buy
Rounding out the free game promos are our typical game / electronics retailers GameStop and Best Buy. What's noteworthy is both these retailers have the Xbox One Madden NFL 15 bundle in stock and qualifying for the free game offer.
For those unfamiliar, GameStop and Best Buy's process isn't well-explained and takes a bit of guesswork.
To get the free game at either retailer, add the Madden NFL bundle to your shopping cart and head back to the Xbox One game section, choose any non-pre-order, physical disc game up to $59.99, and add it to your cart. At checkout, you'll notice the game you've added to cart will now be changed to a price of $0.00. Simply check out and you're good to go. Unlike the NewEgg offer above, you'll have to pay sales tax on this bundle no matter where you live.
GameStop has about 30 games to choose from, while Best Buy offers 36 games.
