Talking Point: Xbox Fans, How Are You Getting On With Microsoft Rewards In 2024?

Doesn't exist in my region... So zero, zip, nada.

Finally let game pass ultimate lapse to get bog standard 3 month game pass core instead. Was no fun playing games to get achievements for more reward points to put towards free/almost free ultimate. Also was getting the gift card money instead because I've had issues where codes didn't work getting the subscription itself with reward points. Going to see if 3 months of point stacking gets me enough for a £20 gift card.

In Canada, the amount of points for a $25 card is around 17K so makes a nice treat. My goal was to get DG2 and BG3 on points and already got one and going so well will try for Cyperpunk as well this year….

I did much better with it before they changed things up, but it’s still free money so I won’t complain about it.

For a €10 giftcard I need 10300 points so I am not complaining.

Hm the service is not for me.

I only collect the points from playing games I want to play. Currently state of decay 2, I don’t have Gamepass right now, getting 10 points every time I play and quite often collecting the 250 points a week if I play 5 times for 15 minutes. So I’m probably getting more points now than before they made the recent changes, minus the ones I previously got for having Gamepass.

So it’s actually improved for me! I’m never going to spend time doing the extra stuff, and quite happy to collect a £5 Xbox credit from it 2-3 times a year.

The changes may be disappointing but the reward are still there and if you put it back into Game Pass you're multiplying that saving.

At least we still have it unlike the unlucky regions.

I did the rewards for three years straight just to get game pass ultimate free. It was a grind but I liked it and it made me try most of the game pass games to get easy achievements for the daily.

It’s definitely slower now with a few updates but it’s still a great value. I got a PC and game between the two but don’t care about the reward tracking.

Hadn't bothered with the point it in a while. Then switched my points for 9 months of GPU. Nearly got enough for another 3 months now. Def worth to keep doing just to get free GPU especially with all the games coming out. Got GPU up to mid 2026. So will keep collecting the points now.

Got a series X last year mainly because I had a lot of points and it seemed like cheap way to get games. It had some nerfed recently but still worth it for me.

I would have never taught this before but I play the series x as much or more then the ps5 simply because I get more games on series x since they’re often cheap with the points.

It’s good, sure it might not be as generous as a few years ago but it’s still the best Rewards program out there, no one gives me $5-10 bucks a month to spend on games.

Overall it’s good but I have no idea how people claim to get completely free gamepass each month purely from the tasks. I do the bing rubbish everyday and I ensure I turn an Xbox gamepass on for 15 mins per day at least 5 times per week. Still don’t get anywhere near completely free gamepass but i will probably get 4 months in the year free which is much better than nothing!

Points?! Haven't even heard about this before.
Though I play Xbox on my PC these days, and I don't even know if it's available here in Sweden?

I've been saving up points to the turn into Xbox store money so I can burn it all on Xbox 360 sales in a week.

Not something I actively chase but I get a £5 voucher every few weeks just from my normal game rotation so that's nice 👍

When I got back into the Xbox ecosystem in 2021 I was massively into the rewards system, kept me in GP for 2 years (and got me a few gift cards as well) once they started to mess around with it/butchering how many points you could earn I stopped completely I still have 24000 points on my account that I'm gonna use for a couple of months of GP - if it's still part of the rewards - when Indy & Avowed come out.

It’s the best point system out of the 3.

However time : point reward is now much lower. So people saying it’s great they get £5 or whatever are actually using a lot more time than what £5 is worth. (I used to point collect more regular).

I just play games now and get whatever I get from it.

Im earning more than ever since the changes they made so I'm happy 👍

Part of my daily routine. Sitting at ~ 91,200 at the moment after cashing in all but 200 points in late Jan.

COD being free and the show brought me back to collecting points. Loads of games I want to play and it saves a lot of money. Though saying that I don't think I've ever paid full price for GPU since it started. £1 deal and then switching EA sub for GPU. Plus using points for it.

I can't be bothered anymore.

I think I'm around 38k points at the moment. I'll probably keep compiling until the holidays to see how many games I can get from it... either from Microsoft or Amazon gift cards.

I have the recurring 1 month ultimate auto purchase whenever I get 10500 points. Get around 2 months a year free and that's just the points I get from playing. Can't be bothered to chase them.

It still extends my Gamepass sub monthly. Plus it bought my household a gold version of a 2 game Resident Evil pack with us only spending less than $5 to cover tax this year. I just never do that mobile game, but still gain a minimum of 13000 points monthly

For some bizarre reason, I'm enjoying earning an achievement daily and the reward points that come with it. On track to earn 12 to 15 thousand gamescore through 2024. If I'm ever hit with a 15 min timer, I'll stop MS Rewards.

@cardcrusher29 I have the 15min timer about half the time. I do hate it, but I can get all the points pretty easy even when it makes me wait. I've been able to get 91,000 since late Jan. Less monthly since they nerfed it a few months ago though.

@FarmDog08
That's unfortunate that you got hit with the 15min timer. Hopefully you can get out of the sentence. I read some people have been able to earn points normally after months of the timer sentence.

I wonder if MS randomly picks users for the timer thing or the user has to hit certain metrics for their account to be flagged. I wouldn't be too surprised if my account is flagged due to fast searches combined with the natural mobile misspellings.

I've never really focused a lot on it, but usually when I discover I've accrued enough points I'll cash it in for a Starbucks card. Lately I've noticed I seem to be increasing slightly more, so I guess it's a good thing.

@cardcrusher29 I've had the timer a really long time. Definitely a year or more. It comes and goes, but I haven't been able to figure out how to make it stay gone, hahaha.

I have almost 13k right now. I just collect them through out the year and cash them in around Christmas and get an Amazon gift card. I have definitely noticed they don't build up as quickly as they used to.

I still try to scrape enough points to maintain game pass ultimate, which is rather silly when I think of game pass ultimate costs 50 cents a day lol

Where I live, Rewards is not available. So, none of the above?

still average 13000 points a month so free gamepass ultimate every month is not to be sniffed at

cant argue with it so far rewards has got me a series X, 42 games a PS5 and now gamepass ultimate every month

I'm still getting the points racked up and I've still managed to top up my GPU with it along with getting the odd £10 gift card so I guess it's going ok.

I gave up after just a couple of months of moving from PlayStation. Its cheaper for me to buy the few games I like than to pay monthly subscription for a majority of games I will never play.

@Salty_Sam the article is about Microsoft rewards not gamepass

I’m still able to get around 12K a month, which allows me to keep GamePass running. I used to get enough were I could get a couple months of Ubisoft+ a year for free but no longer. So while still worth doing for me, significantly worse.

I think I add about 500-1000 points a month.

@trev666 just out of interest, if you don’t mind me asking…how much time do you think you need to spend a week on collecting points, and how long did it take you to save up for a series x? Thats amazing that it has worked so well for you!

The last 3 months it has paid for my GP ultimate, so no complaints (auto redeem 10,500points per month). I imagine it will comfortably cover the subscription cost of my GPU for 8-9 months of the year with very little effort - I search on Bing, open the Xbox app when I remember and play games on my series X. Nothing else.

^ actually I lied….just remembered I do the daily quiz things on Bing too. Quite good fun while I’m slurping my morning cuppa!

We can complain all we want, but at the end of the day. It's free money, it was a grind, I have over $200 of rewards to spend.

@Feffster using the Bing app and PC. One can easily earn 12000 a month.

You get better rewards from using a credit card TBH. They turned rewards into a chore. Used to would be able to rack up points naturally just from doing things I would normally do.

Now they've made the requirements so pointed, it is cheaper to just pay for things instead of earning up points.

Which was clearly the intention.

@ImperialOwl215
Time is not free. And in the time it takes to do the rewards. I make orders more at my job in the same time frame so going out of my way to do rewards is actually reducing my average pay because of how poor the compensation is for the time put in. Ultimately it costs money to pursue the rewards. And I'm sure of most actually did the math, that would indeed be the same case for them as well.

I cannot anymore exchange my points i'm around 36 000 points and i don't have smartphone by choice and i can't get my points anymore i guess i will let my point reach 300 000 points. 🤷‍♂️ they need to bring back the home robot call.

@ImperialOwl215 except it’s not free money. You had to ‘grind’ for it.

Time : money it’s not even close to minimum wage.

MS get plenty from us doing these searches etc.

But as I said above it’s still the best of the 3

Used to love it, now I don't really bother anymore. Cashed in few weeks back and I'm done.

I'm doing much better after discovering I was donating ALOT and was able to disable it, By a lot I mean like 45,000 points over years.

I thought the changes was drastically limiting my "earnings" turns out most of it was going right out the door.

@abe_hikura I hope it was donating to something you support. That would suck if not.

@FarmDog08 yeah it was going to Comic Relief so it's good.

@Kalele redeem through Bing on a computer or through your xbox.

Used to love it and had a years long streak. Had 350k points at one time but haven’t bothered since they messed around with it and killed the stand alone app.

I earn a £5er voucher about once a month, but tbh they are not something I chase. I appreciate what I get and only have time to game for 2-3 hours in the evenings. Play a couple of games, collect my streak points on both the mobile app and console with the odd PC or mobile game and in return I get a £5er discount off a game that's usually heavily discounted to begin with. I hear stories of gamers earning enough to pay for GP subs and even new consoles but I'm not terminally online grinding for rewards like them.

Getting one free month for Gamepass every 2 or 3 months using (awful) Bing and stuff which is more than enough. Needed one for Hellblade 2 obviously and then one in October for CoD and Indy. Beyond insane to get all the (few) big games completely free at Microsoft 😄

I earned £600 in 3 years from 2020-2023. Then they nerfed everything and its absolutely rubbish now. So i dont bother anymore

It's a great shame microsoft took away the points for achievements within games as that gave me an extra incentive to join ultimate (which I have not used for about a year now) and play games I liked and games I would otherwise pass or give up on early. Microsoft also took away points from fitness videos; guess the price shopping; e-sports channel without saying anything. That's not very customer friendly, is it, as it makes you think there is a fault with your pc and waste time searching for a solution. Also, I am now unable to get points using the mobile emulator on PC (Control+Shift + I); and the 90 bing search points per day stops working on movie, author or cast lists after about 6 clicks (I search numbers instead). Making me use copilot to get 40 points is not great as copilot feels a clunky way to search - I don't want to search as if i am communicating with a sentient being when I know full well it is not. Weirds me out - especially when it says sorry. That is all kinds of wrong.

Someone gives you a present. OK, they kind of nerved rewards and the present might be a bit smaller, but i am still getting many points either from searches on Edge/Bing or from playing games on Gamepass and i use them to buy some games or DLCs on an sale. We are a bit spoiled from xbox from all these "goodies" actually. We shouldn't complain for still getting rewards to buy free games or subscriptions 😅.

I am happy that the points needed for a $5 Xbox card dropped but the points needed for Ultimate remained the same. I do like the play 5 times a week and get 250 points but I just stopped bothering with the game pass rewards, even though I have Ultimate since It's such a bother to get the 1000 points. But you do get points for using the Xbox app which is nice.

I use it exclusively to fund my gamepass sub. I get about 10k a month, so its 3 months free, 1 month paid. Cant really complain.

Paired with the xbox credit card rewards, things work well.

Especially when compared to the conpetition. Sony just killed its rewards program and the ps credit card is winding down its rewards(yet to announce a replacement) Stars has been down for over a month, so they effectively have no rewards anymore.

Nintendo has gold points which are a glorified rebate program and platinum points which are useless for anything but digital nonsense.

So all said, Im pretty content even with the reduced value.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I get 10k a month with no grinding. I just use bing for my normal searches, and play games as I would normally.

I do the two daily quizzes, but those are super short and fun since i do sometimes learn things.

@trev666 dkdc

rewards for searches are buggy/not consistent. its a true ms thing.