I got an Xbox for Christmas and have pretty much spent the past month playing Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live using the free 1 month membership.
Unfortunately this has now run out and looking at how much Microsoft charge for a year’s membership, I was taken aback £39.99 a year, especially as Sony do not charge anything for their online gaming and of course playing on a PC is also free.
In the grand scheme of things it isn’t that much but I still felt reluctant to pay that for something that should be free, so I did a bit of good old fashion Googling.
I found a website called gamingmall.com that offers Xbox Live Gold membership for £25.99, a saving of £14 off Microsoft’s list price.
From what I can gather, the savings are made by cutting out all of the packaging and simply giving you the code online.
I was a little dubious at first but when I discovered that you pay via paypal, I thought what the heck, I’m protected and went for it.
The process was very simple and straight forward. Simply choose your product, click buy now and then pay using your paypal account.
The transaction is quick but if you are a first time buyer, they will take 24hrs to verify your account before issuing you your code. To facilitate this, they send you an email with a username (your paypal email address) and a randomly generated password that you can use to go back to the site once you have been verified.
Give it 24hrs and then log into your account and click on the “Your Purchases” section on the right hand menu.
You should see a list of items you have purchased, click on the “get it now!” link and a new window will open with an image of your code.
Copy this code into the redeem code section, either on the Xbox Live website or via your Xbox Console and away you go!