Xbox Live Rewards giving 5% back on March purchases

One of these things is not like the other things

Up through February I was pretty convinced that us long-standing Xbox Live members were getting ignored by Microsoft’s new Xbox Live Rewards program in favor of newcomers. Their initial batch of Points-earning activities include ‘First time Marketplace purchase‘, ‘Activate and use Netflix‘ and others that many of us first did years ago. I haven’t seen any Points retroactively added but I did get a few hundred Points for renewing my membership last week and that’s how I wound up at the Rewards site to spot this new deal.

All Marketplace purchases for the month of March (the fine print details: paid content including movies, TV shows, game add-ons, Arcade games, Games on Demand titles, Avatars and Themes, but NOT Points cards or subscriptions) count towards a 5% rebate to be applied come April. Say you bought Beyond Good & Evil HD and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (when it was on sale) for a total of 1200 Points. That’d get you… 60 Points back next month! That won’t even cover a new Avatar hat but every Point counts and those 60 Points are only coming your way if you’re a Rewards member (which is free anyways).

A few noteworthy details on the program: it’s only open to U.S. and U.K. Xbox Live members and, most importantly, any Microsoft Points you earn through the program will expire come June 30, 2012. Be it by world-ending apocalypse or not, if you haven’t spent ’em, they’re gone. But still, it’s a free chance to get free Points, so just do it!