For those who work in retail....
 

Don't know where to put this but I know some DVDTalkers have jobs at BB, CC, Compusa, BBE and so forth. Microsoft has a retail training site for the XBOX here: www.microsoft.com/retail/xbox
If you qualify you can register and take quizzes that reward points and from the points you can actually order xbox games.

enjoy!

edit to add: leave it to MS to still hit you with a S&H&P fee. its about 8 bucks. the games available now are the launch title games. good for those who never picked them up when they came out.

I picked up a copy of halo for this. Thanks!

I think there might be another thread about this here, but this was the first one I found through a search.

Anyway, Microsoft has made some changes to their training program. The main change is that now you're limited to ordering one (and only one) copy of each game. Whereas before, you could order, say, ten copies of Halo, now you can order one and then that's it.

But another change is that they've significantly dropped the point requirements on a ton of titles. Here's a list:

500 points each:

Amped
Blinx
Blood Wake
Brute Force
Fuzion Frenzy
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
MechAssault
Midtown Madness 3
Oddworld
Project Gotham Racing
RalliSport Challenge
Tao Feng
Voodoo Vince
Whacked!

700 points each:

Amped 2
Counter-Strike
Crimson Skies (Temporarily Out of Stock)
Halo
Links 2004
NBA Inside Drive 2004
NFL Fever 2004
NHL Rivals 2004
Project Gotham Racing 2
RalliSport Challenge 2 (Temporarily Out of Stock)
Top Spin (Temporarily Out of Stock)

1,000 points:

Sudeki

1,200 points:

Fable (Temporarily Out of Stock)

Shipping one game is $8.97. Two games are $13.22 shipped. Three are $17.41. It looks like you can get up to fifteen games shipped at one time for $73.01. Any more games than that, and the weight limit is exceeded.

(Plus, they've got some other crap like hats and shirts, too.)

Anyway, this is a pretty cool deal some people might not be aware of yet. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) they do for Halo 2 next month. . .

Hopefully Kingdom Under Fire shows up on there next week.

It will be if it's a Microsoft studios produced title.

EDIT: It is, so it will be there.

Fable took a couple weeks to show though, so KUF may take some time as well.

Outrun 2, baby.

fyi - back in stock !!!

Looks like they changed the rules.... Only one copy of a game, but the poiints are reduced.

...
 

say you don't work in retail.. does this still work? do they really verifiy employment? Just curious.

Re: ...
 

if you don't work in retail, you can sign up and take the quizzes. However, if you try to purchase something they will ask you to mail in a copy of a paystub from an accept retailer. You only have to do this once (for those that did work in retail but don't any longer)

And the yeah the ordering system has been updated. Only 1 of each title can be ordered. They changed their shipping too, used to be airborne express 2 day now its UPS ground.

Shipping is free on the Canadian site, but unfortunately we don't have Fable.

Kingdom Under Fire is now available.

Several more of the other games (mentioned above) are now out of stock, however.

They also have a couple of Halo 2 t-shirts up that I haven't seen before, although those are temporarily out of stock.


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Some big news is that Halo 2 will not be available on the site until next year (January 5, I believe it was). This is so they
have adequate copies available at retail throughout the holiday season. The regular version will be the only version that you can order from the site, but they did mention that they will be giving away copies of the two-disc Limited Edition (presumably starting next month, for the November contest).