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Xbox love for long-time Xbox Live users

As Xbox Live turns 10, Microsoft surprised some of its longest subscribers with an exclusive special-edition console.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
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Nic Healey

As Xbox Live turns 10, Microsoft surprised some of its longest subscribers with an exclusive special-edition console.

Larry announced the special-edition Xbox. (Screenshot by CNET)

Ten years is no small feat for an online gaming service, and Xbox Live isn't letting this pass without a little celebration. Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb recently tweeted that some of the people who've been Xbox Live members for the whole decade would be getting an exclusive special-edition Xbox.

It will apparently be a 250GB system that has a "decade of entertainment" logo and a custom controller. Oh — and it looks like only US customers were in the running to score one.

Speaking to our CNET colleagues in the US, a Microsoft rep said:

"We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Xbox Live by conducting special promotions for our members worldwide, and today, we began to surprise a select number of our loyal 10-year Xbox Live members in the US with special-edition anniversary consoles."

Xbox Live has changed quite a lot since 2002 — there are now over 40 million members, with Xbox Live Gold users logging an average of 84 hours on the service per month. Interestingly, it's not all gaming time: stats out of the US show that gamers are spending more time on video and social apps, like Netflix and ESPN, than they do playing multiplayer games.