Looks like the XBOX 360 is coming to you for $99

The Verge is reporting that begining next week, you will be able to get an XBox 360 with Kinect for the cheap price of $99.  The catch? You have to sign up for a $15-a-month, 2 year contract for XBox Live. It's worth considering what would happen if the same model that makes smartphones affordable were applied to game consoles.  

This idea is, in a word, brilliant. It takes the "subsidized hardware with back-end royalties" model already in use by game-console manufacturers and kicks it up another notch.

Consoles today are already subsidized. Retailers charge almost no real mark-up, and the consoles themselves are for minimal profit, or sometimes below cost. The retailers do this to make money selling games. The console makers (Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo) make money by charging a royalty on every game sold. Microsoft may lose money selling Xbox 360 consoles, but it makes back money on every Xbox 360 game sold, from any publisher.  The idea looks like it may work, but then again, do you really want another monthly bill.  Also, do you really want to pay a termination fee to stop playing your XBox?