Microsoft to Re-Release Almost One Million Gamertags This Week

Xbox Live Gold customers with at least one year of tenure on the service will soon be able to choose from a renewed pool of almost one million inactive Gamertags this week. These are Gamertags from the earliest days of Xbox Live that were never migrated to the Xbox 360.

“Many of the best and most desirable Gamertags were unavailable … until now,” Microsoft’s Will Tuttle explains. “We’ve listened to your feedback and once again Team Xbox is excited to announce the release of a large number of previously-unavailable Gamertags.”

As Microsoft says, these Gamertags are from the original Xbox era, the same source of Gamertags we used back in 2001. They’re from accounts that never migrated to Xbox 360, so they’ve been inactive for about a decade.

Many of the available Gamertags are in the following categories:

• Proper Names
• Pop culture references (Entertainment, sports, gaming)
• Types of Food
• Geography and Travel
• Science and Technology
• Math and Numbers
• Animals
• Some of the greatest inventions of all time

Access to these newly-released Gamertags will be available on Xbox.com, Microsoft says, or from the Xbox App on Windows 10 and the Xbox One console. (Xbox 360 customers will need to use Xbox.com, the Xbox App on Windows 10, or an Xbox One console to participate.)

The fun starts on May 18. So start thinking about the Gamertag you want—my original Xbox Live Gamertag was xPaul, but I got screwed out of it along the way somehow—and then take your chances on Wednesday.