The Xbox Rewards Program

See that little Xbox 360 box to the right of this blog and above this post. Yes, my meaningless gamerscore has climbed from approximately 5,400 points to nearly 7,700 in just a month or so. And you know why? No, it's not because I'm insane. No, it's not because I'm immature (but you are close). It's because Microsoft started it's Xbox Rewards Program on February 13th. It makes sense for Microsoft. People are going to play games to try to get a bigger "fake" gamerscore, so why not up the equation and sell even more games by giving players something tangible to play for...and why not make the tangible gift just as meaningless as the intangible gamerscore. Read on to see what I mean.

The first contest was sponsored by Old Spice and based on your initial gamerscore, they rank you in one of three categories. Since I started over 5k points, they put me in Level 2. The ultimate goal of the contest is to raise your gamerscore by more than 1,500 points up until the end of the contest on April 22nd. If you do, you win a whole bunch of nonsense prizes....

Well, it took me 28 days, but I managed to raise my gamerscore that much. And you know what I might win. It's pretty amazing.

1) They automatically raised my gamer level to Level 3 - the highest gamer level. Now I don't have to have a gamescore over 10k points to get to Level 3. So in the next contest - I can't wait to see the dumb prizes that time - I get to compete for the "big" prizes....but that also means I'll probably have to buy more games just to get extra achievement points to try to obtain.

2) If I'm one of the first 70k people to obtain 1,500 points -- I guarantee I'm not -- I get Contra on Xbox Live -- which I spent $5 to purchase months ago.

3) If I'm one of the first 6k people - again, not - I get 100 MS Gamer Points to spend on the Marketplace. Which basically is $1.25 in real money. Are you serious?

4) And last, but never least I get a special Old Spice Gamer Card Picture, which I can show off to my competition. No doubt, it'll be a dude using deodorant.

But alas, I was excited as hell when I obtained 1,500 points last night and immediately went online to acknowledge on the contest page that I had won. Maybe I really am insane....or just really, really immature.