Xbox Game Pass - Harold Halibut, Botany Manor, LEGO 2K Drive, Diablo 4, Evil West, Control:UE, Dead Island 2 out now

How else do you pass the time when having a gooseberry fool?

Takes me between one and two minutes to complete the daily searches each day and have redeemed £320 of Xbox credit over the last year and a half and that’s not everyday. I use it to buy overpriced DLC I couldn’t justify buying with my own money. Buying the Dirt 5 DLC tomorrow

Two minutes for 15p. You’re working for Microsoft for £4.50 per hour. That you have to spend with them.

KingK wrote:

Garth wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I've seen people mention searches a few times - what's the deal with that? The rewards site doesn't seem to say anything about searching to earn points

You can get 90 points per day for Bing searches, 12 points per day for using Edge browser, and 60 points per day for Bing mobile app searches.

You can see your daily totals on the Bing homepage if you click on the rewards icon, or via the rewards app on your Xbox (down at the bottom left).

I use Edge on my phone to do the daily set, the 12 points for using edge and the 60 points for bing searches.
Then on my iPad I use bing.com and type in a random search of 1 new character at a time To get through those 30 searches for the 90 daily points. (Top tip, keep that browser window open forever and the next day, just go back through the pages, then the day after that, go forward again - all saves time!)
You can also do the bing.com PC searches through your Xbox own Edge browser too if you wish. Done that myself occasionally although it’s a bit clunkier.

There is no excuse really to not get at least 212 points every day at minimum (50 for any achievement, plus the 12,60 & 90 for searches detailed above). I’ve just gained the April 2000 points bonus this afternoon for completing the various easy tasks on that.

It literally is a case of MS throwing points at me to either buy more games, GamePass subs, or put towards cold hard cash off some hardware. It’s the best kept secret about Xbox if you ask me. I‘m only annoyed I didn’t cotton on to it before Oct when I started. Around 150k points earned in total since then!

You waste how much time?

Phone: Set up a bing folder with x amount of searches to get the 60. PC .Use Edge and set up a folder with x amount of searches and then you get the rest. 20 seconds out of your day, if that it takes a couple of clicks. I've earnt enough to pay for many many months of Ultimate and various games via the free credit depending on what's on sale.

I'm quite enjoying Outriders even though I suck at it.
I think it would be better with a team of 3 though.

How much are they paying me per hour if I do the Bing searches in a few seconds?

Searches on PC alone is like 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate per year, right?

I could do that or spend a few more seconds per day here with you lot getting nothing

Garth wrote:I could do that or spend a few more seconds per day here with you lot getting nothing

But the extra time spent here is worth more: personal fulfilment is priceless.

Rex Kramer wrote:I use a chrome plugin for the searches that takes 1 click and then sits in its own tab. Fakes bing too. Can't remember what it's called.

I use an Edge Chromium plugin called ABS.

Check out that ABS flex.

Just added that ABS plugin now - seems like the ideal solution!

How effective are MS at blocking these kinds of things though - do the developers have to keep updating it to make sure it still works or does it seem like Microsoft don't really care?

The Last Ginja wrote:

KingK wrote:

Garth wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I've seen people mention searches a few times - what's the deal with that? The rewards site doesn't seem to say anything about searching to earn points

You can get 90 points per day for Bing searches, 12 points per day for using Edge browser, and 60 points per day for Bing mobile app searches.

You can see your daily totals on the Bing homepage if you click on the rewards icon, or via the rewards app on your Xbox (down at the bottom left).

I use Edge on my phone to do the daily set, the 12 points for using edge and the 60 points for bing searches.
Then on my iPad I use bing.com and type in a random search of 1 new character at a time To get through those 30 searches for the 90 daily points. (Top tip, keep that browser window open forever and the next day, just go back through the pages, then the day after that, go forward again - all saves time!)
You can also do the bing.com PC searches through your Xbox own Edge browser too if you wish. Done that myself occasionally although it’s a bit clunkier.

There is no excuse really to not get at least 212 points every day at minimum (50 for any achievement, plus the 12,60 & 90 for searches detailed above). I’ve just gained the April 2000 points bonus this afternoon for completing the various easy tasks on that.

It literally is a case of MS throwing points at me to either buy more games, GamePass subs, or put towards cold hard cash off some hardware. It’s the best kept secret about Xbox if you ask me. I‘m only annoyed I didn’t cotton on to it before Oct when I started. Around 150k points earned in total since then!

You waste how much time?

Phone: Set up a bing folder with x amount of searches to get the 60. PC .Use Edge and set up a folder with x amount of searches and then you get the rest. 20 seconds out of your day, if that it takes a couple of clicks. I've earnt enough to pay for many many months of Ultimate and various games via the free credit depending on what's on sale.

1. I have no idea how to do any of that
2. I don't waste time as I do it all whilst having a gooseberry fool

Picked up 8k nearly in a little over a week. My plan is just to keep adding monthly game pass to my sub as I suspect they will change the points per £ ratio in a years time. Its not a major hassle in all honesty, apart from the game pass weekly and monthly specific bonus points, which i don’t really want to do unless its a quick install and open.

Whilst the ps5 is my main console, this will save me having to buy a lot of multiplatform games and i get to play some i missed out on last gen like forza horizon 4, which looks stunning.

I’m guessing all future microsoft owned ip will come to game pass on day one, but a little sceptical about all of them staying on the service forever and think it will breed a lot of microtransaction led games, which isn’t great for the industry. Forza horizon 4 does feel like its constantly trying to push me to buy their dlc.

gamerforever wrote:Forza horizon 4 does feel like its constantly trying to push me to buy their dlc.

Yeah, I've felt that.
I "bought" (used the £8 MS gave me for Easter) The Fortune Island DLC at the weekend.. it's a bit gooseberry fool. Not very much to do.

But the treasure chests are an easy £1mil credits each.

Jenuall wrote:Just added that ABS plugin now - seems like the ideal solution!

How effective are MS at blocking these kinds of things though - do the developers have to keep updating it to make sure it still works or does it seem like Microsoft don't really care?

They can sometimes permaban you from the rewards program

gamerforever wrote:Picked up 8k nearly in a little over a week. My plan is just to keep adding monthly game pass to my sub as I suspect they will change the points per £ ratio in a years time. Its not a major hassle in all honesty, apart from the game pass weekly and monthly specific bonus points, which i don’t really want to do unless its a quick install and open.

Whilst the ps5 is my main console, this will save me having to buy a lot of multiplatform games and i get to play some i missed out on last gen like forza horizon 4, which looks stunning.

I’m guessing all future microsoft owned ip will come to game pass on day one, but a little sceptical about all of them staying on the service forever and think it will breed a lot of microtransaction led games, which isn’t great for the industry. Forza horizon 4 does feel like its constantly trying to push me to buy their dlc.

The only time they're likely to remove any of their own content from Gamepass is when it contains licenced IP such as music, brands etc. If it's wholly original content then there's no reason to remove it.

LewisD wrote:

gamerforever wrote:Forza horizon 4 does feel like its constantly trying to push me to buy their dlc.

Yeah, I've felt that.
I "bought" (used the £8 MS gave me for Easter) The Fortune Island DLC at the weekend.. it's a bit gooseberry fool. Not very much to do.

But the treasure chests are an easy £1mil credits each.

If you want free forza money every week, try: https://rewards.forzamotorsport.net/en-US

You can collect your bonus money from every Friday.

BID0 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:Just added that ABS plugin now - seems like the ideal solution!

How effective are MS at blocking these kinds of things though - do the developers have to keep updating it to make sure it still works or does it seem like Microsoft don't really care?

They can sometimes permaban you from the rewards program

Well that's not great then!

Maybe I'll avoid that approach.

rinks wrote:Two minutes for 15p. You’re working for Microsoft for £4.50 per hour. That you have to spend with them.

Nope. I usually do the searches etc during work time and so it's my employer that is working for Microsoft for £4.50 an hour.

I just go to microsoft rewards every morning, do the searches and logon to the game pass app and usually get an achievement or two for another easy 50, so thats roughly over 200 per day, plus you get the streak bonuses. Let's say 250 per day, which is 91250 per annum and you can get at least 7 months worth of game pass ultimate from that. You will likely earn double that, due to monthly bonuses etc, so you should be able to get at least one months sub every month for free. I don't see myself buying too many games for series x and am hoping a lot of multiplatform games come to game pass, which will save me at least £50 per game. The series x and game pass are great value, even for people who have a ps5 and is the main reason I got it. Microsoft will reward game pass early adoptors for the first 3 years at least and once they have over 70 million subscribers they will slowly increase the price, which would probably still be a deal. At the moment, its a crazy deal, especially for those like me, who didn't get an xbox last generation and have a lot of games to play. Even something like Ori, which I wanted to play, saves me over £40 having to buy them on the nintendo switch.

In 3 months with game pass, I've made maybe 500 points, which going by the rewards site gets you strawberry float all.

I’m trying hard to be polite but strawberry float it - you weird point chasers sound ridiculously tight, imagine trying to order rounds in a pub or sorting a restaurant bill out with you lot! Who’s got the time for any of that caper?

Buffalo wrote:I’m trying hard to be polite but strawberry float it - you weird point chasers sound ridiculously tight, imagine trying to order rounds in a pub or sorting a restaurant bill out with you lot! Who’s got the time for any of that caper?

It's literally a quick few button clicks in the morning and most people have the game pass app and play the odd game every day. It's not a big hassle, and keeps the series x as a 'good investment' in my mind.