Last chance for Microsoft's 10-cent deals on movie, apps and music
Microsoft’s “bonus day” of deals features HD rentals of Furious 7, Tomorrowland, and the ubiquitous Frozen, in addition to the option to buy The Weeknd’s Trilogy, Imagine Dragons’ Night Visions, and Drake’s Nothing Was the Same albums for a dime apiece.
That’s not all, though: Virtually all of the previous 10-cent deals are still available, including most of the summer’s top blockbusters: Mad Max: Fury Road, Marvel’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Inside Out, Jurassic World, Terminator Genisys and more. In all, there are 37 movies for rent, all available in HD for ten cents. (Normally, Microsoft rents them for $4.99 for a standard-definition copy.)
Why this matters: Most customers don’t often think of Microsoft as a source of music, movies, and games, even though the company offers its Groove Music service and its Movies & TV app. But the deals have paid off in a big way, Microsoft said in a blog post: Since the promotion kicked off 10 days ago, the company has seen a tenfold increase in customers who have made a purchase, and a 29-fold increase in overall purchases of apps, music, games and, movies. Perhaps most importantly, 75 percent of those who purchased a deal had never shopped in the Windows Store before.
The catch, of course, is that you’ll need a Windows device to access them. The easiest way to take advantage of the deals is via the Windows 10 Store app, which lists the deals in a prominent “hero” positiion at the top of the screen. (Some of the music deals have also popped up on Windows Mobile 8.1 devices.)
Within the Store app, however, you’ll probably still need to select the “Music” tab and then scroll down to find the 10-cent albums, though, which include Jay Z’s Magna Carta...Holy Grail, Avicii’s True, Eminem’s Recovery, and more. Note that several of these albums were offered for free as part of last year’s massive free album deal. And while many apps are available for just a dime, the lack of Windows apps means that Microsoft’s running repeats of deals it promoted earlier, such as Hitman: Go.
Each movie is available for 14 days after you purchase it, with 24 hours to view each movie. You’ll have the option to stream it (if you have the bandwidth) or download it for local playback.
(I have personally rented a few of the movies from Microsoft, and the streaming was smooth and uninterrupted. However, I ran into a bug when I downloaded a local copy on a Surface Book, then tried to play it back over a miniDisplayPort-to-HDMI cable. The audio mysteriously vanished after trying to adjust the display output. I simply re-rented it on another device and streamed it.
Microsoft didn’t say that it was making its additional day of deals available for Cyber Monday, but it certainly must have factored into its decision. Check out the other Cyber Monday deals we’ve rounded up.