Talking Point: Is It Time For Xbox To Sunset The 'Games With Gold' Program?

@EliJapan I totally forgot 360 games were to keep! Yeah, that's a bummer

It's obvious they are deliberately making it worse so they cat shut it down. They want to offer the add supported Game Pass instead. They even tried to raise the price of Gold and they had a riot on their hands, so forced to backtrack.

This will mean no cheap conversion of Gold to ultimate Game Pass which will suck. I can live without as they still have rewards points. Understandable that they can't keep giving everything for nothing.

Only if the replacement to Gold isn't that horrible rumoured ad Game Pass tier. I'd rather stick with Gold than get Game Pass.

The main point of Gold is to have the ability to play every game in multiplayer mode. I think, a company like MS could and should give us that for free. That alone would be worth canceling the free games, I think. Dishing out free games is always hit and miss. Some will like them, some won't, some will be in between. For example, I wouldn't be interested in the games mentioned on Sony's side, so I would consider the gifts "boring", but I wouldn't call for a cancellation of the program. Giving out free multiplayer, however, should have a much better hit ratio, I'd say.

I wonder if they'll drop it when the rumoured cheaper add placement addition of Games Pass releases.

I generally never play Xbox Live Gold games. I wouldn’t mind if it went a way.

Xbox Live Gold should be a thing of the past now. It’s a relic.

I think the main reason the games are on the smaller side is simply because Xbox has allocated their game negotiation budget mostly for game pass. I also think it’s more expensive for them to negotiate “we give this game away for life to anyone that claims them” than to negotiate a time-window game pass deal, where players only get to play the game during that time frame. Honestly, I don’t think many would complain had these games been added to Game Pass.

I doubt anything will change until they decide what they are doing with multiplayer, and the rumor is that will only happen after Game Pass reaches some subscription threshold. If they end up removing the pay-wall from multiplayer, then I see it all entirely going away. I can see a few potential paths:

A) new Game Pass Live tier - has multiplayer access, get to play first party games only (no third party games), and only 6 months after launch (yes, stealing ideas from that survey) worth $5 or $6 a month but no yearly discounts. Under this model I also see the base Game Pass Xbox plan giving access to multiplayer.

B) They entirely get rid of Xbox live, basic Game Pass Xbox includes access to multiplayer games.

C) They make multiplayer free for all, and kill Xbox live.

The challenge they have is that if they remove GwG then Gold is way too expensive for the privilege to play multiplayer.

On the other hand, if they cancel Gold altogether, everyone will lose all the GwG games they have accumulated over the years which will probably cause a fan revolt. They probably can't grandfather people in either because they aren't the publishers of all those games.

Microsoft is in a tough spot right now. They have no recent must-have exclusives. I find it hard to believe they will kill Gold right now. The timing isn't right.

Roll it into gamepass and give us one game a month that we get to keep.
Doesn't have to be a new (or a AAA) game... something old-ish that people are no longer buying, but decent of quality, would fit the bill.

@evan23 I’m sure, should they kill GWG it XBLG, access to claimed GWG will be rolled into either GPXB or GPU.

I mean, the entirety of XBLG is already part of GPU. All they got to do legally is claim they are not adding any more GWG free games, and the only way to access XBLG is via Game Pass tiers.

With nothing to replace it with I would say no, keep it. You will never convince me that no games are better than what we are getting.
Since it is already included with my game pass sub, I would rather have them than not have them.

Obscure indie game comes to game pass and the general public goes "cool I never would have tried this without GP, glad it allowed me to discover a hidden gem"

Obscure indie game comes to games with gold and the general public goes "this is laughably bad, just stop giving us any games at all."

They should end it even if they don't replace it with better. Im not personally mad about the poor quality FREE games but it gets them bad press every month so why bother.

@antstephenson This is actually a good idea. Another possible thing they could do is allow someone to select, from the one or two periods where game departures happen in a month, ONE game which DOESN'T leave their library. It is one or their free games for the month.

No more situations where you get some terrible game that you're not going to play, instead, YOU pick that one game you're still playing from a year or two ago.

Just make online free to play. I dont want to have to jump through hoops with bing reward points to get online for free when there is no requirement on. PC

I'd rather see them improve it, but when they're actually doing everything wrong, it's hard to not just ask to can it. With PS Plus Essential, you get online, games you've heard of, & game perks. With Gold you get online, games you've never heard of, & no perks, that's saved for GPU, and most of the time they're either on par with PS Essential or worse. At this point I'm not really sure what can even be done since they keep showing they don't care.

It seems inevitable that GPU will get a price increase at some point once it is more viable, a good trade off would be to get rid of gwg and make Xbox live free.

They should shut GwG down, charge more for GPU but make online free.

If you buy gold for the year and GP monthly, it works out to the same price as paying for UGP monthly for the same year anyway.

Gold offerings have been pretty lame for a long time. It's one of the areas where MS truly fails to even compete with Sony, much less excel. Either beef it up or ditch it and reduce the price for "online access".

Pretty sure it is time to sunset Xbox live gold completely. They should do that $2.99 ad supported Gamepass that was in the survey as a substitute for Xbox live gold.

I say keep it; but honestly, I think Gold needs to just go away all together. It's really time that online multiplayer on consoles stops being gated behind a paywall.

However, since that will probably never happen, might as well get SOMETHING out of those who only subscribe to Gold (however few that may be at this point).

Game Pass Ultimate is such a great value between Cloud, PC, and Console, that it's worth the cost of entry. So even if Gold went away, Ultimate is still "worth it" - though I am sure a whole host of people would drop Ultimate and just move to standard Game Pass on console unless Cloud and PC are important should Gold go away.

@Somebody The thing to replace it would be removing the need for Gold to play online or merging it completely with Game Pass. The reason people don't complain about random Indie games coming to Game Pass is, you know, that's kinda the point of Game Pass? To have big catalogue of games to try, and if you don't like it, whatever? Meanwhile with Gold most are paying for the online and nothing else, because it doesn't give any perks for multiplayer games and the games they do give away now are things that frequently go on sale for a few bucks because no one wants them. The poo cherry on top is you don't even get to keep the things you didn't really want.

@Grumblevolcano just take the games away that no one cares about & make it just paying for online since they won't drop the paywall I only use ps plus but if they scrapped essential & forced me to pay for their games catalogue that I don't care about if I wanted to play online I'd be pissed lol

@Hypnotoad107 'They should do that $2.99 ad supported Gamepass that was in the survey as a substitute for Xbox live gold.' then you'd still be being charged for playing multiplayer (something you aren't charged for on pc) & also be forced to watch ads while paying Microsoft for the luxury 🤣

@Would_you_kindly Online multiplayer free for all games is the best option of course though the last time we thought they'd do that they tried to almost double the price of Gold instead. Seems pretty clear they're either going to keep Gold or replace it with that rumoured ad Game Pass tier of which Gold is a lot better.

@Grumblevolcano yeah having to pay for multiplayer & then being forced to watch ads on top would really boil my piss especially when all Microsofts games go to pc day one with no charge for multiplayer in games that have it

Ever since they stopped featuring 360 games I stopped caring to even download the free games on Gold. They're just not the kind of games that I would even care to play. It's just a pointless sub that I seem to get nothing out of.

I personally think just make a pool of games free if your on gold and leave it at that. I haven't touched a games with gold game since gamepass and although they are a nice to have, I'm not sure what purpose it serves when you have access to a massive library of games already...

@shoeses I wouldn't hold your breath over xbox removing the cost of online play. That is a rumor that went nowhere. It was probably like the ad based gamepass rumor, just because they send out a survey doesnt mean it is ever happening. Nintendo is showing everyone that people will pay for the worst possible online experience.

If you claim each game you will eventually have a big catelog of games to try. If you don't like them whatever. I currently have 174 titles from games with gold that I don't have to worry about leaving on short notice.

It's literally just a bonus to something you already have.

@Would_you_kindly I’m pretty sure the survey said that it would include online play. Basically, the ad supported tier seems like a clever way to dump gold completely. They definitely need to find a way to be rid of gold. I really don’t know why someone would keep a gold sub and not upgrade the it to Gamepass ultimate for £1.

are you INSANE!? and miss out on... ok I honestly can't even remember the games for January and i just read it like a day ago

It makes no sense that I can play a game like Forza Horizon 5 on PC online for free but have to pay a tax to play that same game on console. Gold is totally at odds with Xbox's "ecosystem" concept and flies in the face of their whole "consumer first" shtick. Paying for online was somewhat defensible in 2008, when online infrastructure was under development and an Xbox was 200$ – in 2022 it's completely insane. One can only hope they scrap it altogether and don't replace it with that dreadful ad-supported idea.

@Hypnotoad107 well the majority of people don't know about the conversion method to get it cheaper I'm sure if everyone was doing it Microsoft would've closed that loophole by now

Yeah, I think from the numbers given, $12/month is the average amount paid for game pass. I’m sure I read that somewhere.

@Grumblevolcano But if that option indeed comes out at just $3/€3/£3 I’d argue it could be way more successful than Gold ever was, I’d be willing to pay much more just to get rid of the ads but for most people it’s not an issue.

The way I see it, is they won't reduce the price of Gold or improve the service if they stop the free games, so, keep giving them. I don't play a lot of them but there are a few I like getting as freebies.

Here is my pitch to replace Games with Gold.
"Games with Ultimate" Xbox curates a list of games currently available on Gamepass and allows you to pick 1 game per month to keep forever.
Not every game is available, it is a curated list of say 5 games every month, and we get to choose 1 from those 5 to keep forever.
So for the month of December the games might be Outer Wilds, Gorogoa, Potion Craft, Moonglow Bay, and Banjo Kazooie (360). So a couple of games that are about to leave the service, 1 that has just been added, 1 that has been there awhile, and 1 from previous generations.
These are all pretty cheap games, but the quality is still a lot better than what we're currently getting with GWG. Also even if it's only 1 game, I would much rather get a choice, even if it's a limited choice.
Some games might be repeated, but that just gives someone the opportunity to pick it up if they missed it the first time, that doesn't punish anyone that did pick it up originally, because there will always be something else to choose.

I think the current GWG (and Gold in general) needs to be sunset. I think removing it completely and offering nothing in return will only generate ill-will. Something different, something slightly better is a good compromise for everyone. I don't expect Xbox to offer AAA bangers every month with GWG, or to ever offer that with Games with Ultimate, but there has to be some middle ground where we don't feel like it's completely horrible every single month.

The problem is if they get rid of Gold it then undervalues GPU as I can imagine most get Ultimate for the combination of Gold and not the PC element.

Games with Gold has never bothered me. When I got an Xbox I stopped paying PS Plus and started playing online on Xbox because it has better online, so I paid for Gold and the games were freebies. Then I got it to convert it to Game Pass Ultimate a few times. However, I think that Microsoft would be in a better position ending Gold, making online free -sustained by the Xbox store- and expanding Game Pass tiers: Ultimate, Console, PC, Cloud...

Besides, as someone whose first Xbox was Xbox One, I have received many Xbox and Xbox 360 games for no additional fee.

@Kaloudz "Close it off with a bang and let it die."

Include Halo infinite campaign and a free set of cat ears, then?

@Sifi if the standard price isnt an extra quid then it's a loophole