How low is low The Work and Play Bundle is now $149, but you'll need to act fast. Neowin discovered that the bundle was marked down an additional $50 from its original $199 price.
Add it all up, and the Work and Play Bundle--a year's subscription to Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Live Music, and Skype Unlimited--is one heck of a deal, price-wise. By themselves, a year's worth of Office 365 Home and Xbox Live Gold is $160 (or $151.82 if you buy the Xbox Live Gold sub from Amazon). So that means that Microsoft is offering Office 365 and Xbox Live Gold for a discount, and tossing in a sub to its music service and Skype Unlimited for free.
And that alone makes the subscription worth a second look. One can make the point that music fans already have a subscription to Spotify, Rdio, Google Play, or one of a bevy of other services. And Skype Well, unless you've made Skype the backbone of your communications infrastructure (or place a lot of calls to overseas) chances are that Skype's just a nice free video calling service. But the discounts attached to Microsoft's two free services make this worthwhile.
The problem, of course, is that you can't apply the discounts if you've already bought the bundle. So if you're an existing Microsoft subscriber to either service, the deals really don't apply either.
But if they do, you'll need to act fast, and read the fine print: you can only buy the bundle in Microsoft's brick-and-mortar stores, and not the "specialty stores" denoted with an asterisk. You'll also need to purchase them before Jan. 4, and if supplies run out, you're out of luck. Finally, each customer can only buy three copies.
Why this matters: If you happen to be in a spot where you're between Office 365 subscriptions, and own an Xbox One, and want something to listen to on your commute, this really is a no-brainer. It's only if you start to wonder whether you can still piggyback off a work Office 365 subscription, or don't own an Xbox One, that you may want to opt out.