Age of Empires III: Complete Collection is $0.10 on the Games for Windows Live Marketplace (Microsoft's digital download store). You need to download the client first and purchase through there because it still shows up for the normal price on the site.

I already own the massive Collector's Edition minus the expansions, but I'd spend the $0.10 on it again anyway even if it didn't have the expansions because my Alienware M11x notebook doesn't have an optical drive.

Just to be clear, this includes AoE III, The War Chiefs expansion, and The Asian Dynasty expansion.

I read that the deal is only good until 10:00PM Pacific Time.

Gotta love Microsuck.....

I decided that was too good a deal to pass up. So I went and did everything needed to purchase it for $0.10 and downloaded it. Guess what they conveniently forgot........... the activation key needed to install the f'ing game. Will have to try calling them to figure out wtf to do now. Stupid microsuck.

EEZEE, Sombo.

Consider: Microsoft is a business. They make money by design. If they are offering $60+ worth of game for $0.10, might there be a reason? Like it isn't good enough to sell retail, maybe. I don't know, I didn't play the game. Just throwing a "what if" view out there. (I like the chaos of game-related thread wars ;))

EEZEE, Sombo.

Consider: Microsoft is a business. They make money by design. If they are offering $60+ worth of game for $0.10, might there be a reason? Like it isn't good enough to sell retail, maybe. I don't know, I didn't play the game. Just throwing a "what if" view out there. (I like the chaos of game-related thread wars ;))

The game is more than a few years old but it still holds up graphically and the game play is excelent ("award-winning" infact). Ensemble Studios was a premier game developer and their "Age if ____" RTS series is their flagship. MS disbanded them after that Halo RTS, but AoEIII predates it and was very well received.

Barring special/collector's/etc editions, PC games didn't reach the $60 regular price until Modern Warfare 2 last year. Several more have been released at that price, which I refuse to buy when they have less hands in the pot and should be able to sell it $10 less without a platform controller's hand in the pot. Anyway, this one is an RTS series intended for a keyboard and mouse and it's years older than MW2, so it never got a $60 release or console port.

As for the chaos: Yeah. Fanbois get passionate defending their platform of choice... which is why I side-step that and buy the PC version of any multiplatform title any time I can (cheaper, better graphics, more inputoptions, etc at the expense of convenience ans ease).

I bought but didn't DL because I didn't have the HDD space at the time, so I hope I don't have a similar issue to Mike. Heck, my CE key might work if that is the case. :)

Well, under "Purchase History" mine says that there was an error retrieving my purchase history, which is also what it said before I bought the game and had no purchase history. I thought then that they just hadn't designed it to show a proper message, but now I see a blank "Game" that keeps calculating the download size/time and never starting. There is a section there with "Game Activation Key," but mine says "An error has occurred" instead of giving the key. When my twin brother bought Batman Arkham Asylum for himself and our nephew when it was on sale many months ago, he signed out before downloading his and signed in as our nephew to buy his. The client screwed things up and would only presnt one license/key to both of them for the two different purchases. I don't remember how they sorted it out, but I'm pretty sure he had to call MS.

This is obviously designed to get people set up and familiar with the checkout process so that they will be more likely to buy games in the future, so it's in their best interest to make it a good experience even for only $0.10.