GameFly

There are many video games that I am really interested in the single player campaign, and I that I only play once.  Often, I end up paying $60 for the game, and selling it back to GameStop after playing it for a month.  Since GameStop doesn't pay that much when buying used games, playing the game for a month often costs about $40.

Since there are only a few games that I play for a long time, I figured I would try GameFly.  GameFly is essentially a Netflix for video games.  You add video games to your queue, and they send you the games as they become available.  When you are done with the games, you can just put them back in the envelope and drop it back in the mail, and the next available game on your queue will be sent.

With the demand for more recent games, it is hard to get the newest games through GameFly.  But if you want a game that came out in the past 6 months, it shouldn't be a problem to get it.

If you are interested in trying it, GameFly has an offer, where you can get a month free.

Extending Xbox LIVE Family Membership

A while ago, I transitioned to an Xbox Live Family Gold Pack. This allows us to manage our son's Xbox Live account from a single dashboard, and add Microsoft Points to the Xbox live account that we use on the Xbox in the bedroom.

Amazon had some pretty good deals on Xbox LIVE 12 month membership cards, so I purchased one of these.  But,I was not able to redeem the code.  I expected that I would be able to apply the 12 month Xbox Live membership to extend my family membership, in my case by 3 months, since I have 4 people in the family membership. But I kept getting errors trying to redeem the code.

When I created the family subscription, I was able to add several Xbox Live Gold accounts, and for each Gold account, the subscription length of the family membership was extended by each.  So I figured that I would do the following:

1. Remove one of the Xbox Live accounts from the family subscription


2. Redeem the code on that Xbox Live account


3. Re-add the Xbox Live account to the family account

Unfortunately, this didn't work.  I was able to complete the first two steps, but when I try to re-add the account, I get an error.  It looks like the account is added to the family, but not that account is not part of the subscription.  So I won't be able to share Microsoft Points with that that account.

I am hoping that Microsoft starts to sell Xbox Live Gold Family cards (and Amazon sells them for a discount).


Update 5/14/2011: It looks like Microsoft fixed a bug that was preventing this from working. Today I was able to add the account to the Family Subscription, and that extended the subscription by 6 months.