Upcoming Xbox Live Gamertag purge is your shot at a less dumb account name

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Another great Gamertag purge is at hand for Xbox Live. Starting on Wednesday at 11 am PDT / 7 pm BST, Microsoft (opens in new tab) will begin releasing close to a million abandoned account names from the original Xbox era for active users to claim.

The new tags will roll out across a 24-hour period, though not everybody will have access to them right away: you’ll need an active Xbox Live Gold subscription and at least 1 year of cumulative Xbox Live Gold membership to be eligible, and you must make the change on either Xbox.com or on an Xbox One console (the names won’t be available on Xbox 360). This doesn’t have any bearing on Microsoft’s name change policy: a surcharge is still required, unless you have a free name change stored up.

Microsoft understandably declined to list the specific Gamertags which will be released. But if you’ve been waiting years to get away from the old AdjectiveNounNumber racket, hopefully you can find something good. As for me, I’ve learned to embrace my identity as a Repaired Tulip.

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