Xbox Games With Gold Is Officially Ditching Xbox 360 Games

Wonder if this means more X1/XS games, more budget for the X1/XS games, or if they are going to keep adding OG xbox games.

I would argue the 360 games were the best part of it as well! Will be interesting to see what the offering becomes going forward.

Right. I don't know why people complain about giveaways. For me, it was a fantastic way of getting a big library of free games when I got my Xbox One, especially compared to the stinginess of Nintendo. I guess that it has been the same for new-gen newcomers. However, from a business point of view, some Xbox and Xbox 360 games were repeated recently and they have the rule of adding only backwards compatible games, not to mention that Game Pass is going to replace Games with Gold eventually, so I guess that the online services will be included with Game Pass. Perhaps, it will be like this:

· Game Pass for PC

· Game Pass for Console (including online services)

· Game Pass Ultimate (Console including online services, Cloud and PC)

· Game Pass Cloud (mobile devices, TVs and internet browsers)

Anyway, some online services are free on Xbox already so...

Lot of people crap on games with gold. Overall I'm really good with it. Kinda feel people want 4 AAA games every month. Just not going happen.

It makes sense as the number of 360 games available is limited on modern consoles and the 360 itself was discontinued over 6yrs ago and most of the games are 10yrs old or more now. The 360 isn't 'Last' gen, its practically an antique in technological terms...

It would make sense to replace them with XSX era games - similar to Sony's PS+ Essential Tier which dropped PS3 era games a while back.

Most 360 BC games, the list that MS have also had to pick from for its Gold offerings, are cheap and/or rotated in/out of Game Pass. It won't cost a lot to build up your own 360 era Library instead of waiting and hoping that the 360 game{s} you specifically wanted come round 'again' on Gold.

Go out with bang and not a whimper. Give us the 360 games that are backwards compatible, but not available for purchase!

It wasn’t that bad. People just like to complain. I’d say it was hit/miss of 70%/30%.

Im fine with it i would just hope maybe the two games being offered are of better quality

most of the games given out ive never even heard of

Oof. So Gold just went from dire to phantasmic. No mention of extra games to make up for it, no mention of quality changes. Just "Sorry you're getting less, #dealwithit?"

They do know Gold is a punchline, right? I mean I think that's the point, they don't want it to be appealing, they want you to get GPU. But..... At a certain point the optics just seem bad. Especially when Sony just relaunched their subscription but are still doing the freebies. Gold is so awkward at this point, and they've all but directly said they want it to fail away. But it's uncomfortable watching it.

@NEStalgia as you know, there was a time when Gold was just for online play. GwG was/is just a nice bonus since its inception.
It remains just like it always was. Difference being that now there are better value services for people who want games.
(plus, you don't even need Gold anymore to play free games online)

The 360 games were the best part of the service.

Party chat, cloud saves, and F2P games are all free on xbox. Which makes Xbox Live Gold just an online tax to people who play paid online games. Like Wonderlands, It takes Two, and even MCC.

Kill it already.

Ouch. It would never happen but it would be cool if all the previously offered games were made available for a month for any that missed them/subscribed later.

I like games with gold. It shines a light on games I would never try otherwise. I would rather have it this way then get a game I already purchased.

@Carck Well, Gold was abusive from the start, and the idea of paying to play online games never sat right with me coming from the world of PC back to console. It set the trend in motion that Sony and Nintendo have since copied, and it was with severe biting of my tongue that I purchased my 360, despite loathing that aspect of it, due to how terrible PS3 was at running anything third party. So I blame Gold as a negative for the industry overall.

Obviously, since then, it's become far more lax, with, as you said, free F2P online play, free cloud saves not behind the pay wall etc. I don't really play online games on XB often, so I rarely even need Gold, thanks to them removing cloud saves from the paywall unlike competitors, now, but I have it due to GPU including it anyway. But there's still a certain aspect of bad optics, not as stark as trying to double the price of gold, but as the overt value looks worse and worse that it just looks awful. Sony is a poor competitor in most services aspects, but their free Plus games are one area they're making MS look worse most of the time, so far, anyway, and it's an unforced error on MS's part.

That said, we'll see if Essential starts looking like GwG now that Extra exists.

Well, the X360 was the best part of GWG. Especially considering the fact that you actually own them. The Xbone selections are for the most part garbage. So, for me, with the exclusion of X360, GWG loose all of its value.

So in other words it's become completely worthless. 360 games was literally the only thing it had going for it, now it's just a poor man's GamePass.

Microsoft needs to phase it out, I don't want it anymore.

@BartoxTharglod MS doesn't tell us how many Gold members there are anymore, so I can only assume that the number is pretty dire, or completely irrelevant to the Xbox platform.

There's 25m GP subs (which is far more than the >15m Xbox series consoles out there).

And there were apparently 100m active xbox online users in 2020 (massively up from 40m in 2016, and far more than the combined xbox one and series install base at around 65m). The service has grown far beyond the Gold members, and in reality that is what MS wants. A massive online userbase.

So I mean, at best, you have up to 40m users who just pay for Xbox Gold. And 60m who play F2P, on PC, or through Game Pass. Though the actual number could be much smaller. We're maybe talking at a loss of 2.5bn a year, which is nothing for MS itself.

Losing 2.5bn a year is bad business in the short term, but to standardise its online systems across all platforms, have the consumer friendly points over Sony and Nintendo (who arguably, need that money far more), and to make Xbox Network the best option for online play across multiple devices, seems like smart business long term.

Between PC and mobile streaming, XBox Live Gold is on its last legs. The service can only hold out for so long. Ripping off that band aid quickly will help improve the Xbox image faster, and early in this gen cycle. The best time to do it, well, it was two years ago, but the second best time is right now.

This actually kind of blows. Those were the only games I actually claim. I'd actually like to see them just drop Games with Gold as a whole. Free online and drop the price of Gamepass just a few bucks and call it a day. That would be such a 'W' for Microsoft.

@Qphlat27 Lol you want them to drop paid online and also drop the price for Game Pass? That’s NEVER going to happen.

Let’s be real, they won’t drop paid online in a very very long time, as they have more than 50 million paid subscribers and they won’t lose that revenue in one day.

The only option I see is to get rid of Live Gold altogether and just require basic Game Pass (not Ultimate) to play online, also replace XBL deals with something like “Game Pass” deals.
Or perhaps create a new “low-cost” Game Pass tier that only includes Microsoft’s games (Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision-Blizzard) but it grants access to playing online and deals.

Idk, they should just get rid of Live Gold in any way possible, it feels so out of place since Game Pass exists.

@Banjo- if they did that though it would be forcing people to pay for a service they might not want if they just want to play online

@Carck I don't think they added the 'free' games out of the goodness of their hearts I think they probably realised pc gaming was becoming more mainstream & they knew more people would be questioning why they should be paying a monthly subscription to play games online that they could play online on a pc without a paywall so the games were added as a way of making gold look like more value than it actually is

@Richnj I wonder if when they add microtransactions to the MCC if they'll also remove the gold requirement

@Would_you_kindly It would be a start, but I don't see them making an exception just for MCC. Plenty of other paid for online titles also had micros and still required XBLG.

I wonder if it drops to 2 Xbox one games a month if the quality of those Xbox One games might be better? Haha or that could just be wishful thinking!

This is a shame, the 360 games were such a nice little perk of the GamePass ultimate subscription as you got games to keep every month along with your all the other GamePass benefits.

I’ve been an on and off subscriber to gold for a few years as the PS4 and Switch were my main consoles last gen, I loved how you could keep the 360 games when your subscription lapsed.

I’ve recently gone back and played through some of my old game with gold games like Bayonetta (this was excellent). Some of the game we’ve gotten in recent months like Yokos island express have been pretty cool as well

"... Xbox Games with Gold program, which hasn't been particularly well received over the past few years."

Because of MS' own doing. They want as many GPU subscribers as possible. They still haven't gotten me and probably won't ever.