The following titles will be available at launch:

• Among Us
• Descenders
• Dishonored 2
• Doom Eternal
• Fable Anniversary
• Fallout 4
• Fallout 76
• Forza Horizon 4
• Gears 5
• Grounded
• Halo 5: Guardians
• Halo Wars 2
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• Human Fall Flat
• Inside
• Ori and The Will of the Wisps
• Psychonauts 2
• State of Decay 2
• The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

Note that the game library may vary by country. More titles will be announced before the service’s launch in September. New games will be added two to three times yearly, though how many at any given time is unknown. Those currently subscribed to Xbox Live Gold will automatically switch to the new plan with no change in pricing.

Games with Gold officially ends on September 1st. Any Xbox One games redeemed through it are still accessible if you subscribe to Game Pass Core or Game Pass Ultimate. Xbox 360 titles obtained through the same will remain in your library, even without a subscription.  Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

That’s according to a report that recently went live on Windows Central, claiming that Xbox Live Gold will be retired entirely in September and replaced with a new subscription tier for Xbox Game Pass. The report, which seemed to have been published prematurely, was promptly taken down, though not before Korean website cafe.naver managed to capture its content, as well as a screenshot that seemingly confirms the existence of the new Game Pass tier (you can view it below).

As per the report, starting on September 1, Xbox Live Gold will be discontinued, and replaced with Xbox Game Pass Core, a new tier for the subscription service that will also become its cheapest one at $9.99/month, which is the same as Xbox Live Gold’s current monthly subscription fee.

The Core tier will reportedly include access to online multiplayer for non-free-to-play titles, as well as member deals and discounts, which are also offered with other Game Pass tiers. All Xbox Live Gold subscriptions will allegedly be automatically converted to Xbox Game Pass Core subscriptions on September 1, while any and all games that you got for free via Games with Gold will remain in your account.

Speaking of which, the report claims that Games with Gold, with offers a new selection of free games to subscribers every month, is also being replaced. Apparently set to be discontinued on September 9, it will be replaced with Xbox Game Pass Core instead offering a library of over 25 free games to members, which will reportedly continued to expand following launch.

At launch, the last of games will allegedly include Among Us, Descenders, Dishonored 2, DOOM Eternal, Fable Anniversary, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Grounded, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Human Fall Flat, Inside, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Psychonauts 2, State of Decay 2, and Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.

Microsoft has yet to officially announce this, but it’s possible that concrete word on these upcoming changes will arrive sooner rather than later.

Last month, Microsoft announced that it was increasing the prices of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions, as well as the price for Xbox Series X, in several markets except for US, Japan, Chile, Brazil and Columbia. Meanwhile, earlier this month, it was confirmed that Microsoft had reintroduced its $1 introductory deal for PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

“We have reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalog; however, Games with Gold will continue to include exciting Xbox One titles and exclusive savings each month,” says the email. “This will not impact any Xbox 360 games that you downloaded before October 2022”.

Despite the phasing out of Xbox 360 games as part of its monthly lineup of free games through Games with Gold, it is worth noting that already-owned Xbox 360 games will still be accessible to download.

It was inevitable that Microsoft would eventually phase out games from Xbox 360, especially considering the fact that the platform is now two generations old. Sony similarly stopped giving out PS3 and PS Vita games back in 2019.

Recently, Microsoft announced that Beasts of Maravilla Island, Relicta, Thrillville: Off the Rails, and Torchlight would be coming to Xbox Games with Gold in July.

For instance, it seems like Xbox Live Gold – the paid subscription that’s required to play paid online multiplayer games on Xbox consoles – might soon be folded into Xbox Game Pas Ultimate permanently. Gold subscriptions are already part of the highest Game Pass tier, but according to journalist Brad Sams, Microsoft is currently considering discontinuing Xbox Live Gold entirely and offering it exclusively via Game Pass Ultimate. That would mean that if you want to play paid games online, you’ll need a Game Pass subscription.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard similar rumours, of course. Reports have claimed time and again over the last couple of years that Xbox Live Gold is going to be discontinued permanently down the line, though Microsoft has previous said that it has no such changes planned.

Recently, it was also reported that Microsoft is planning on launching a family plan for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. It should be interesting to see if these rumoured changes are bundled and introduced together as part of an upcoming restructuring.

In January last year, Microsoft reversed a decision to raise Xbox Live Gold prices in response to widespread backlash, and also confirmed that Gold subscription requirements for free-to-play multiplayer games were being removed. Read more on that through here.

According to Grubb, Xbox removing the requirement for Xbox Live Gold for free-to-play multiplayer experiences as well as Halo Infinite‘s multiplayer being free-to-play indicates that the Redmond-based giant plans to eventually phase the subscription out sometime in the future.

“I just wanted to reiterate, Xbox Live Gold is still on a board somewhere saying ‘this is going to go away at some point,'” Grubb said, “Whether or not they’re actively talking about it right now, I don’t know, but they still have it on a roadmap saying ‘Xbox Live Gold will be dropped at some point in the future’.”

“Microsoft’s just kind of heads down on getting user acquisition, and that means ‘Xbox Live will go away but we need to get to a certain threshold with Game Pass before we can make that choice and unplug that revenue source because we have enough coming from something else,'” he added.

The speculation itself is plausible, since Microsoft did try to raise the prices for the subscription but had to drop its plans following fan backlash on the matter. Xbox Games With Gold continues to be an after-thought, seemingly in an effort to push more people to buy into Xbox Game Pass instead.

Another month, another round of Xbox Live Games With Gold from the folks at Xbox. This month looks pretty good, with four games up for grab over the course of June. Two of the games will be Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S titles, while another two will run via backwards compatibility. The Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S titles are The King’s Bird and Shadows Awakening, while the backwards compatibility titles are NeoGeo Battle Colosseum and Injustice: Gods Among Us.

The King’s Bird is “a seamless platform adventure with physics-based movement” with gorgeous art that will have players escaping into a secret world ruled by a tyrant. In Shadows Awakening, players step into the role of a demon “summoned from the Shadow Realm to consume the souls of long dead heroes.”

Neo Geo Battle Colosseum and Injustice: Gods Among Us are both 2D fighters. The former is from storied fighting game studio SNK and combines characters from several of their IPs, including King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, and Fatal Fury. Injustice was developed by NetherRealm, the studio behind Mortal Kombat, and pits DC’s greatest heroes against one another in an original storyline.

The games combine for an MSRP of $79.96 and 3200 gamerscore. The King’s Bird will be available from June 1st to 30th. Shadows Awakening will be available from June 16th to July 15th. Neo Geo Battle Colosseum can be claimed from June 1st to 15th, and Injustice can be picked up from June 16th to 30th.

You can watch a trailer for this month’s Games with Gold below:

After initially being available for Xbox Insiders, the Xbox Live Gold paywall for free-to-play titles on Xbox has been removed for all players starting today. Xbox Wire notes that more than 50 free-to-play titles can now be enjoyed without needing the subscription service installed. This includes Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Fortnite, Path of Exile and Phantasy Star Online 2 among other games.

Microsoft first announced plans to drop Xbox Live Gold for free-to-play titles back in January. This is when it raised the price on the service, prompting swift backlash from consumers. Following this, plans for the price hike were swiftly abandoned. Of course, for paid multiplayer titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, you’ll still need Xbox Live Gold in order to play with other people.

While rumors circulated about Microsoft dropping this requirement, the company has yet to confirm whether it will happen. Nevertheless, with so many free-to-play titles dominating the space, the paywall’s removal should be beneficial for the majority. Stay tuned for more details on other potential changes for Xbox Live in the coming months.

Microsoft is preparing to remove the Xbox Live Gold requirement from free to play titles on Xbox. It will also no longer be required to access Looking 4 Groups and Party Chat. These changes are currently being flighted for Xbox Insiders and should be available to all players soon.

They arrive months after the company tried to hike the price of Xbox Live Gold. After receiving widespread backlash, Microsoft walked back its stance and also promised that free to play titles would no longer require Gold. The other features being free for all users also lends credence to rumors of Xbox Live Gold being dropped entirely, though it’s still not officially confirmed.

While Xbox Live Gold has been the subject of scrutiny over the past few years, Xbox Game Pass continues to thrive. Titles like Outriders will be coming to the service next week (but only for console players) and reports indicate that games from Ubisoft+, Ubisoft’s own subscription service, could be added as well. Stay tuned in the meantime for more details.

Xbox Insiders in Alpha Skip Ahead & Alpha today we are flighting some new features. Multiplayer in Free-to-play games, Looking 4 Groups and Party Chat on Xbox no longer requires an Xbox Live Gold membership as we flight and test these service changes ahead of general availability

— Xbox Insider (@xboxinsider) March 24, 2021

Microsoft have been making changes here and there to Xbox Live of late, including major ones like free-to-play games finally no longer requiring Xbox Live Gold subscriptions to be played offline, and it seems that more changes – though related to the Xbox Live branding this time – might be coming as well.

It seems the Xbox dashboard no longer has any mention of Xbox Live, and instead only refers to it in the UI as “Xbox network”, suggesting that Microsoft might be preparing to drop the long-standing “Live” branding entirely in favour of something more general and wide-ranging. Given their platform-agnostic and services-driven approach, that would definitely fit with their strategy.

Of course, this is yet to be acknowledged by Microsoft in an official statement, so it’s probably best to wait for word from the horse’s mouth for now. Meanwhile, some reports have suggested that Xbox Live Gold might still be done away with in the near future (despite Microsoft saying that it isn’t going away any time soon). Read more on that through here.

https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1373458474898706433?s=19

Microsoft recently made the announcement that they would be increasing the prices of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, the online service that’s required to play games online on Xbox consoles. By and large, the price increases announced were pretty steep. Though the monthly subscription price only went up $1 (which would still have added up to a healthy amount in the long run), the three month subscription saw a $5 increase, while the six month subscription saw a 50% increase, climbing to $60.

The changes have been met with widespread backlash and criticism, and Microsoft have now responded to that backlash the way you’d want them to. In an update on Xbox Wire, they have confirmed that they are reversing the price increases, and that you can still expect to purchase Xbox Live Gold subscriptions at their previous prices- $9.99 for 1-month, $24.99 for 3-months, and $39.99 for 6-months.

“We messed up today and you were right to let us know,” the update reads. “Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day. As a result, we have decided not to change Xbox Live Gold pricing.”

In fact, it seems Microsoft are almost going in the opposite direction in what’s a rather sudden about-turn. Having to pay Xbox Live Gold subscriptions even to play free-to-play games has always been something that Microsoft have received plenty of criticism for, but that will no longer be the case going forward. If you want to play a free-to-play game online, you will no longer need a Gold subscription.

“We’re turning this moment into an opportunity to bring Xbox Live more in line with how we see the player at the center of their experience,” Microsoft writes. “For free-to-play games, you will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold membership to play those games on Xbox. We are working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible in the coming months.”

Halfway through last year, reports emerged that suggested Microsoft were considering discontinuing Xbox Live Gold altogether and making console online gaming free. Soon afterward, Microsoft responded to those reports, saying no such changes were planned.