Talking Point: What Did You Think Of Xbox Games With Gold In 2022?

There were some good picks (mostly 360/OG Xbox) but overall Games With Gold was a big disappointment this year.

Honestly they should just drop this and make online free.

It's not a good look when PS+ is mostly very good. I'm Sure the suits at M$ can see all the negative comments and press.

Honestly they should scrap this and come up with something else as a “Game Pass Lite” or whatever, Live Gold and particularly Games with Gold makes ZERO sense for Microsoft’s current strategy and it only gives Xbox a bad look when compared to PS+ Essential which has been much better this year.

It can be summed up by the following emoji 💩

I forgot Saints Row 2 was in GWG, but I apparently own it so I must have gotten it at the time

It's a real shrug from me. I'd rather they cut the price of Gold instead. Of course it won't really be costing them much, if anything, to give these games away anyway.

I know there are some people who value this stuff, so I'll hold back on describing it as a waste of time, but it really is not what I'm looking for in a service like this. I have never claimed a single title and I've been on the service a long time.

PSN essential is effectively the same service (online with a few free games), but at least some of their titles have felt better, and I'm surprised MS have not felt the need to 'up the game' on GwG to make that comparison look better.

I hope they fix it next year. MS started the charging for online play - they could get a win here by making online free and just having GP as the sub service.

I'm afraid it was a big fat 'F' from me...

The quality has been very hit-and-miss this year, but for me, the "sting" is that they dropped 360 games with seemingly no apparent increase in the quality of X1 games.

Definitely a F although gamepass hasn't been much better this year imo

If i thought about it at all it was with mild annoyance

@FraserG Actually, I voted for E because over the year, there was quite a varied selection and compared to the 'cost' of Gold, could 'exceed' the amount people spent. If Gold cost £60 a year and you got £200+ worth of games added to your library, its difficult to give it an 'F' - although now without the 'older' games, the 'value' of Gold is 'worse' now.

Trying to be objective and not personal about it is difficult because I never bothered adding ANY of the games to my Library. With a LOT of games 'ready' to install, many of which I know I'll 'never' bother with, I decided to stop adding games just because they're 'free'. SR2 though, I already owned on Disc.

I'm sure that there are people who enjoyed 'some' of the many 'indies' that were offered whilst for many, they were disappointed not to get some AAA games and/or IP's they'd heard of before - why perhaps SR2 and Portal 2 were the most popular.

That's why I ended up with an 'E' rating because it could be worse, but it was 'disappointing' month after month after month and in terms of games, couldn't compete with their rivals. I can't think of 1 month where Gold competed with PS+ and therefore can't really go above an 'E'.

I tried not to be personal or emotional, looking at it objectively as a 'service' and comparing it to its competitor - the best way to assess the same 'period' in time with the 'same' global circumstances impacting all.

That being said, if I was to rate it from a Personal or emotional perspective, your scale doesn't go down low enough. Even an F- would be too much considering I have not bothered with ANY of these and even my favourite, SR2, is dated, no desire to 'replay' in 2022 etc.

I think I can be Objective because I Subscribe to GPU which includes Gold for 'Online' gaming and a lot of 'new' games to play every month - not 'just' a Gold Subscriber who only has 'Gold' games, not all the Game Pass games to look forward to playing every month...

A few decent offerings (Portal 2, Hue and Radiant Silvergun) but not enough and mostly a huge disappointment.

GWG needs to improve or be killed off. I still think it has a place, if only they’d look at adding some golden oldies like Powerslave, Shadowman, Strangers Wrath or Toy Soldiers HD. There must be scores of above average games that M$ could hoover up and add for very small beer.

@Feffster You talk about them adding what are 'low budget' games to Gold yet that's what they have had in abundance. Just because its not an N64 era IP that maybe people have heard of, you get much newer games but still would cost about the same to buy in the MS store.

Is it 'just' the IP's? Having some that people have heard of - even if they are 'small/short' and/or dated is better than having some 'new' IP's, perhaps bigger scale and/or modern features, but you've not heard of them because they are 'indies' instead of 20yr old games ported to new systems. I'd also argue that most are 'better' looking too than those 'old' games.

Shadowman is very dated and its visual style is 'awful' compared to what a LOT of indie devs are achieving in recent years so why would that be 'better' than an Indie that today costs about the same in the store?

I can understand if people want AAA budget games, games that cost $50+ instead of those 'Digital' only, indie releases that cost ~$20. Its like complaining you got Turkey instead of Chicken, not the 'game' title/IP you wanted but in terms of 'value/cost' no different. Its not like expecting an expensive Sirloin Steak and getting a Sandwich, expecting to get AAA big budget games, but only get those 'cheaper' games...

I doubt it would cost MS 'more' for 20+yr old games that 'cost' the same or less than relatively 'new' indie games in their own store. It may also benefit those developers more to promote their games because they didn't stand much chance trying to get players to play their game with all the news and press around AAA games...

If Pentiment was offered (assuming MS hadn't bought Obsidian), people would still complain about it because its not a AAA or IP they'd heard of - doesn't mean its 'worse' than some 20yr old game built for extremely 'limited' hardware with extremely low polygon/asset quality, audio etc. I can understand why some would prefer Outer Worlds for example, because its a 'bigger' budget game and so seems 'better' value to get that for 'free'.

@FraserG for me an F would imply the program broke down and missed months entirely, like giving a game a 1/10 rating, but understand why anyone would vote F.

I voted D, in the school system I grew up with, that is not a passing grade.

F minus. Even though Portal 2 is one of the best games ever made, it's still a very old videogame that I have already played a decade ago. That's not nearly enough to save a very weak year. My other highlight is Yoku's Island Express, that's a game I played for the first time and it's very good.

I'd rather have 4 repeat 360 and or OG Xbox games a month than what they've been offering... it amazes me how people fall for the 'it's actually a big value' marketing scheme when the majority of these games go on sale frequently for 2-5 bucks. So not only are you not really getting a good deal, you also have to pay for Gold forever or lose access to those games.

There's still a ton of older games they could make backwards compatible if they actually cared... and they'd all be better choices for GWG than the Xbox One games we get now.

@BAMozzy - fair point, and my suggestions are subjective but I still think that there must be a raft of games out there that would be “cheap” for Microsoft to license that would be higher quality than most of the offerings on GWG this past 12 months.

If GWG offerings were generally and consistently of a high standard this thread and discussion wouldn’t exist.

As I said above, GWG needs to improve or be killed off. I’m not bothered either way, but in its current state it is pretty irrelevant.

@Feffster I'm trying to ascertain whether your specific objection was more about the lack of games that you have heard of before because in your case, it didn't seem to be the lack of AAA budget games as it seems with most people who expect at least 1 every now and then...

All I was trying to say is that its then down to 'preference' - maybe MS think its better to offer and promote 'new' indie games, get people to try something different, unique, creative etc than offer a 20yr old game of equal (or more) cost that fans would buy eventually in a sale where as you would rather have those really 'old' games.

I do understand why people expect better because MS once offered better and their competition offers better at that specific tier in their Subscription models. It's hard to feel its satisfactory when you see Sony get more AAA's which makes it feel 'better value'. People feel 'short changed' which is very different from feeling like they'd be 'happier' with more 20yr old games from 'dead' IP's over some creative new indie IP that would still cost about the same to buy if they wanted. That's just individual preference, like preferring only RPG's, or only 3rd person Single player linear story games.

From MS's perspective, you have basically 2 tiers of games - the Low Price Digital Only 'Indie/Arcade' tier and the AAA budget Top Tier. It probably costs similar to offer those in the Lower tier regardless of whether its a 20yr old game or a brand new Indie - and from MS's perspective, the 'newer' indie is working with the next gen of devs and promoting their games which may pay dividends in the future...

We got some real bottom of the barrel games for sure.

With that said however...

I did want to give a massive shout out to Colt Canyon. It was a really nice surprise for me at least. I've really bee having a blast with it and I'm glad I got it with gold as I'd likely have missed it otherwise.

I honestly thought going from 4 games to 2 every month would mean they would up the quality of the ones they did offer

nope didnt happen

Games with Gold makes those 90s shareware disks look like a bargain. At least that had Duke Nukem, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Lemmings on it.

@BAMozzy - I would just like to see an overall improvement in the quality in the games offered with GWG (compared to those offered in 2022). No, I don’t expect AAA titles to be included, but obviously wouldn’t turn them away if they were.

My examples are subjective & happen to be older games/remakes but I’d be more than happy to see newer & indie titles too, just so long as they raise the standard.

The general opinion shown by the poll above is that currently GWG simply isn’t good enough & I completely agree.

@Feffster That's my point - you talk about improving the 'quality' by offering games that are objectively 'worse' than what was offered - 'older' and dated games built for simplistic hardware versus these newer indies that reviewed generally above average.

If the only reason you (and others) are basing their 'quality' concerns on whether its a game you've heard of before or not, then that is rather pathetic. I can understand that people will feel that the 'quality' is directly linked with Price and therefore the lack of any AAA games is going to affect their view of the service and make them feel like its simply not good enough.

But what you said doesn't make sense, swap out some of those 'lower' budget games built by 'small teams' for some old 20+ yr old game dug up from the grave of history, ported to modern hardware as cheaply as possible and sold at the same price as 'new' games developed from scratch by indie devs?

You talk about agreeing that the 'quality' isn't there and yet mention swapping out 'brand new' games from the past few years in favour of games from over 20yrs ago that are certainly no 'better' and by modern standards, arguably much more basic/worse than the same priced games we have been getting.

I could understand it if you were citing games like Halo, Forza, Gears as these were made by MS and would increase the 'value' of Gold as these are AAA games costing more - let alone all the 3rd Party games they 'could' offer from the XB1 era onwards - games Sony seem to be able to offer on their PS+ Essential tier.

But I don't understand how you can think some really old games are somehow 'better' quality than much newer, more modern games built for more modern hardware, often scoring above average when reviewed too.

For some, an overall 'improvement' would be at least 1 AAA game a quarter or better still, at least 1 a month - now they have stopped offering 360 and older era games to make up for the 'loss' of those. Its a 'value' thing - had been 4x $20 games - now 2x $20 games instead of any $60 games...

The 'quality' most are referring to in terms of 'lacking' is that AAA quality titles, not substituting some $20 games with other $20 that are objectively 'worse' as you seemed to want.

@BAMozzy - to be clear, I’m not here for an argument - simply to express my opinion.

However, I think you’ve missed my point, or maybe I haven’t made it clearly enough.

In summary -

I get GWG ‘free’ as I subscribe to GPU.
I see it as a bonus and I’m not stressed about what’s on it or not.
However, I do think this year’s offerings have been generally ‘poor’ (with some exceptions as I said above).
That’s my opinion which is subjective, but also that of lots of others (hence the large number of E & F votes).
I’m not bothered about the financial value of the games offered.
The value of a game to me is whether I like it or not, it isn’t based upon its financial cost. Hence I’m indifferent on whether there should be AAA games included, but if there are then I’m happy to accept them.
I don’t agree with your assessment of remakes of these older games - Powerslave/Exhumed is one of the best remakes of a classic game ever made - certainly not “ some old 20+ yr old game dug up from the grave of history, ported to modern hardware as cheaply as possible” as you state above.
As I said above, I’m not suggesting that GWG should just be about older games or remakes. Again, I’m quite happy to see newer or indie titles included….with the proviso that they are good ones, that raise the standard of GWG which is currently generally poor.
I appreciate that opinions on games are subjective, but using something like metacritic to assess whether a game is generally well received isn’t a bad start point.

I’m happy to stand by my original post - GWG needs to improve or be killed off.

This is my last post on the subject but go ahead and have the final word. In the meantime I’m off to play Portal 2 - one of this year’s better offerings on GWG.

I will give it a F rating as it has been quite pior but above all as since they stopped giving old gen games they did not even thought about giving one extra game for the current gen...

Bladed Fury is actually pretty cool. A game I wouldn't have heard about if it wasn't for this.
To be honest, a lot of people compare this with PS+. This month it had Mass Effect Legendary Edition and everyone is prasing Sony because of that but
A) It's been on Game Pass for a long time
B) I already have it.

The problem (at least for me) with AAA games is that there's a chance that if it interests me, I'll buy it. So when it comes as a free game, I get nothing.
So yeah, Mass Effect is great, but it's a loss for me. And it's not the first time.

What i do think of Games with Gold? The same as almost everyone. There's no reason to keep this with Game Pass around.

The only reason Gold is kept around and paid is because of Online Multiplayer in Xbox and some discounts here and there (which does add to the discount Game Pass sub's have), not the games. Just add them to Xbox Game Pass already and abandon Gold for good.