Poll: How Would You Grade Xbox Games With Gold In 2021?

I gave it an E - started the year off 'OK' and gave us the best selection in February but its been a downwards trend every month since. Despite celebrating 20yrs in November, it's been a very mediocre end to the year and overall, its been a very disappointing 'year' compared to PS+. PS+ would get a 'C' which overall isn't bad - its 'average', and therefore Xbox has to get a lower grade.

I gave an E as well. Only 20% of those games I can see myself playing in the next 2 years. I still d/l and deleted 95% of them

Little Nightmares and the Injustice game were the only ones I played

Games for Gold has felt pretty pointless for me outside of occasional free 360 games. Now a days anything that requires a subscription to play is pretty much just Gamepass territory for me these days. The kinda games they get on Gold just feels lame by comparison.

games with gold is pretty pointless for years now. other than grabbing the free 360 games that i doubt i will ever playthrough . another month has arrived and the only worth while game is ( orcs must die) i really think is time that games with gold be retired for good

I gave it a 'D', mostly because I either already owned many of the games, or wasn't particularly interested in many of the others.

I voted for February because of the inclusion of Gears 5, though I distinctly recall that at the time it wouldn't actually allow me to download and own the game. I have absolutely hammered it on the GamesPass though (I'm in the top 1% of Mechanics in the World and still complete 3-5 Hordes on Insane each week (just me and my mate). Having put a couple of thousand hours in now (I would assume) I finally relented and bought Gears 5 and Gears Tactics in a bundle this week (Tactics is also a great game). I know it will probably never leave the GamesPass, but I prefer to own it, as I do all the others.

Here's hoping that Gears 6 is announced at the Game Awards in December...

Gave it an F as I joined start of the year and only downloaded February games and have still to try them. All in all for me, having struggled to be motivated to try a single game this year its a 0/24 result which when I was at school would give me an F.

Heh who's giving them an A???? That's some blinded dedication right there.

I gave an F. Haven't played a single one of them from gold. MS don't care about offering you value for gold. They haven't for years. You all know this.

i really think all these people rating December's games with gold selections a solid C or above are just being nice. i prefer to be honest . i rated it an E and i thought that was generous

F for me. There wasn’t a single game I even downloaded. The service need not exist.

February was the best month for me got to keep gears 5 after my gold subscription ended for some reason

I've played 5/45, pretty sure that constitutes as an E? At least that's what it feels like. My ps plus ratio is way better, but even if you take it aside gmg has felt so underwhelming for way too long of a time now. I'm not expecting it to get any better next year either sadly.
@Medic_Alert I'd like to agree except for the fact that xbox barely ever puts a blockbuster on there to begin with, on the other hand I would rather have to complain about the excess of AAA games lol. I've also noticed that xbox has been granting us a game that previously had been in gamepass here and there some months, though you're right nowhere near what sony does to ps users who have both psnow and ps plus. Bit too blatant from them that.
@Fiendish-Beaver, I don't want to spoil your party but if I am right in assuming that you play with either randoms or bots would you mind if I joined those insane parties? I've never tried them but it would be cool to do em for once.

It’s kind of become a bit pointless. Any decent games seem to come to gamepass.
It’d be nice to get some older but better games added to the GWG list or just do away with it all together.

January, February, July, August and October were good and you keep the Xbox and 360 games forever. Games with Gold and Deals with Gold are just bonuses. Online services and Game Pass are the real deal now. I wouldn't be surprised if Gold disappears soon. I voted D.

I think January, February and August were good. That’s 3/12 or 1/4 that were good. Using your scale I would say F is 0 and A is 1. The rest would be as follows: [A=1, B=0.8, C=0.6, D=0.4, E=0.2, F=0.] 1/4 would be 0.25 and fall between D and E on the scale. So I would say D minus.

Gave them a C for effort, like @BlueOcean says, it's just a bonus on top of the amazing value that gamepass is, my youngest daughter is crazy about lego games, so we got the 2 batmans so she was happy, Yookoo-laylee and Moving Out were welcome too...

Yeah there's some good games there, but I only downloaded a couple and haven't actually played them yet.

They could get rid of all these "free" games and I wouldn't really care. Though then you'd expect them to lower the price, but despite them being quick to say how you get hundreds of pounds in games over the year I doubt it really costs them much to include these. So they'd never offer a half price subscription to not get any of the games.

@TheSilverFalcon Yep, the purpose of Games with Gold is not to please everyone with every game because, obviously, some games will not be interesting or have already been purchased. I guess this bonus will disappear and there will only be Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate, the latter with online services included (Cloud and online unless they make online free).

I gave it a D, with the best month being February for resident evil as it was relatively new at the time.. The reason I gave a D though is because in comparison to previous years, it felt like most titles were pretty weak and low value anyway. I'm always happy to receive a free game and try something new, but would say this year felt much less excitable than others for Games with Gold.

The Gamepass however, that's a whole different story and most likely the reason why Games for Gold fell behind a little bit too. With money being invested in creating a better value subscription model rather than the free rewards for its lower package.

I don't think it's fair to say that the whole thing is pointless though as many commenters may suggest. Just because the titles arnt to your liking, doesn't mean the whole giveaway is worthless. These people would only ever be satisfied if they could pick their own each month, even then they would probably find something to dislike about it. Even if I'm not particularly keen on the games myself, I'm still grateful to receive them for free every month and often discover games I wouldn't have played otherwise without this service. It would still be nice to have some more excitable games included though, atleast some that I would have heard about before hand. It feels more rewarding than just another game to try when it's something I've been meaning to play anyway.

So that's what the D is for, as previous years contained more recognisable games that were exciting to receive and play through, rather than this year which I probably only cared to claim around a third of them. That still averages out to about one a month which I did enjoy though so I'm okay with that.