Once upon a time Xbox Live Gold account users had their annual subscription automatically renewed by Microsoft, but the newly revamped Xbox.com lets your membership die a natural death.
It's a welcome change, as the auto-renewal always struck us as egregiously money-grubbing. Forcing a user to phone a customer services rep to stop the annual fee being automatically swiped from his or her account just isn't cool, Microsoft.
You can now toggle automatic renewal on or off, and this isn't the only change Microsoft has made to its site. It now features Beacons, a function that allows you to mark the games you'd most like to play online with friends. Feeling like some Modern Warfare 3 or FIFA 12 this week? Tag them with Beacons and your buddies will know you're up for some fragging/ball-kicking action.
As Eurogamer reports, the new site, which has also had a visual overhaul (and more closely resembles the user interface of Windows Phone 7 as a result), also lets you search for movies and TV shows when using the Zune in-browser video-streaming service. It has been updated in light of the upcoming Xbox 360 autumn dashboard upgrade.
Happy about this change? Or is it long overdue? Zap us a comment below, or on our Facebook or Google+ pages.
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anonymous 12 November, 2011 18:31
Actually, you could cancel the subscription online in the previous xbox.com interface, although it wasn't super clear, it was still there.
Steve Hawtin 13 November, 2011 19:40
You've been able to do that on Xbox.com for months now, it's not been added in the new update. Catch up, will you?
anonymous 14 November, 2011 07:08
A feature they slyly removed a year or two ago. You used to be able to do it yourself.
anonymous 4 December, 2011 23:25
This is CNET UK - UK user could NOT turn auto renewal off online and did indeed have to call a phone number.
It is overdue, I assume the hassle of the phoning was not worth the possibility of extra money by charging people full (over)price for renewal without them realising. Though still it is not TOO obvious to those who ignore terms and conditions and the like.