Xbox vs. Pampered Chef: 1,000 women get free games to throw Xbox house parties

By Microsoft Subnet on Fri, 01/02/09 - 5:14pm.

Last month, Microsoft tried a new scheme to build excitement for Xbox. It sent $150 worth of free Xbox goodies to 1,000 women across the country who agreed to throw a Xbox house party for at least 10 friends. The women used their own Xbox consoles but received a free party pack that included microwaveable popcorn, the Xbox trivia game Scene It? Box Office Smash, an Xbox universal media remote control, a three-month subscription to Xbox Live, and 1,600 Xbox Live points (useful for buying games, movies and other Xbox tchokies), reports the USA Today.

The story quotes Heather Snavely, Microsoft's director of interactive entertainment business global platforms, who notes that Xbox has sold 20 million consoles to date:

"In order to get to the next 20 million, we need to get a new audience of women and teens. We're going after them in ways that are different than ways we've done before."

Microsoft found the 1,000 women through a marketing service called House Party, a company that attempts to orchestrate word-of-mouth buzz about a product or service through home parties. House Party has a database of 100,000 folks who have signed up to host such parties and it matches products to the people in its database most likely to like the product in question. In this case, USA Today reports, Microsoft sought out women who owned an Xbox console and were active in social networks.

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