McDonald’s One Hot Holiday Xbox One Giveaway Review December 10, 2013

During the Xbox One launch event, Microsoft announced they were partnering with McDonald’s to do a major Xbox One promotion during the month of December.  Well, the promotion has launched, and as I write this McDonald’s restaurants across the country are giving away Xbox prizes in celebration of the One Hot Holiday promotion and boy, have I got a lot to say about it.  So, lets take a look and see how it stacks up, shall we?

First off, the rules to enter the promotion are pretty simple to understand, and McDonald’s had signs all over my local branch to inform me what I needed to do to play.  If you order any Quarter Pounder sandwich, Medium French Fry, or Premium McWrap you will be given an entry piece eligible to win a prize in the promotion.  The contest pieces are affixed to the item wrapper and can be pulled off as easily as the contest pieces from McDonald’s yearly Monopoly promotion can.  Pull the game piece off the wrapper and it will inform you what you won.

Immediately this promotion scored points with me as my local McDonald’s was participating in it starting exactly when their website promised they would.  This is in complete contrast to the Every2Minutes Mountain Dew promotion where nearly none of my local retailers offered marked Mountain Dew or Doritos products on shelves at a time when I needed to bank points early to be competitive in an auction system.  The fact my local retailers sat on their hands twiddling their thumbs as the promotion went on was a huge detriment to the odds of me winning a prize.  McDonald’s on the other hand wasted no time starting their promotion and marked promotional wrappers were readily available to interested players on time.  All I needed to do was purchase a participating food item at my local McDonald’s and pull a game piece off the wrapper.  It couldn’t be more convenient.

To redeem your winnings, you will need to go to McDonald’s One Hot Holiday official website from either your PC or portable device and submit to them your name, e-mail address and mailing information along with the unique code written on the game piece.  Once McDonald’s verifies your contest entry is genuine, they will send you the download codes for whatever you won via e-mail.  The website worked really well on my smartphone, and while I felt it asked for a bit too much personal information (for some reason it needed my entire mailing address), this only made the form longer to fill out and I was still able to submit my entry without issue.  Collecting your winnings on the other hand can be an exercise in patience.  McDonald’s does say it can take anywhere from 72 hours to ten days to verify a contest entry.  It took about four days for me to receive my winnings via e-mail, but when they did eventually arrive they worked perfectly.

While McDonald’s and Microsoft has said they are giving away Xbox One consoles as a grand prize, that isn’t all you can win.  McDonald’s is also giving away downloads for Xbox Live games, movies, and TV shows.  In fact, McDonald’s promises that anyone who participates will win something.  Typical lower tier prizes for the contest can include download codes for Xbox Live Arcade games like Ms. Splosion Man or The Maw.  This also will score them some points with me, as I haven’t seen a promotion like that offer giveaways to everyone who played since the Subway Uncharted 3 contest a few years ago where everyone who played got access to the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta.  By offering free Xbox Live Games as a potential prize, this could end up being one of the most generous video game promotions in video game history!

If you’re interested in playing, head on down to McDonald’s right now!  This is a fantastic promotion that offers Xbox players the chance to win an entirely new next-generation gaming console and some great downloadable titles.  Check it out!