If you didn't sign up to be notified when Pepsi's Xbox 360
giveaway got started, let it be known that Every10minutes.com is now live
and taking orders (er, codes). (The site began to accept sweepstakes entries from specially marked packages of Pepsi,
Mountain Dew, Sierra Mist, and their various incarnations Sunday.) The idea behind this marketing scheme was that Pepsi
and Yahoo partnered together to offer an Xbox 360 as a prize in drawings to be held every 10 minutes until the end of
October. You can schedule in advance which 10-minute slot to place your bets in, and, yes,
up to 500 codes can be entered per time slot
per person. That's the maximum number of points you're allowed for the entire sweepstakes, however, so choose where you
place your eggs wisely. (That's also a lot of Dew.) Not only that, you'll be competing with everyone else who's got a
code to enter, so finding that lucky 10-minute window to place your bet in will be crucial to getting your
pre-release 360 and
a free copy of Need for Speed: Most
Wanted or Madden 2006. Just make sure you have a Yahoo account if you intend to enter online.
Judging by the number of bets placed even at 5 or 6 AM ET ? over 600 entries at times ? getting your hopes up for a free 360 might not be the best idea. Whether this number will rise or fall as the contest progresses is a good question, but the fact that people have been holding onto their codes for some time now (until the contest officially got started) may possibly be countered by the fact that more people will enter as word of the sweepstakes spreads. It?s also said that the prize in question will play ?old Xbox games,? so we can only assume this means winners will be getting a hard drive with their systems. There were some extra codes I received by signing up for the site alert, opting to receive a Pepsi or a Mountain Dew e-mail newsletter, and installing a custom Yahoo Messenger IMVironment before the site went live. Whether an additional code can still be obtained by these means is somewhat doubtful (but I love to be proved wrong). At any rate, entering a code on the off chance that it results in a free console sure beats having to pay for a standard or premium package any day. Whatever the case, good luck, everyone. And may the best cheapskate win.
