Microsoft Confirms Xbox Live Gold Is Being Replaced This September

So, same price right?

I'm very confused with the pricing of this, currently it's 6,99€/month for Live Gold and 10,99€/month for Game Pass Console. So why get Game Pass Core for 9,99/month?

It is just oddly priced. 7,99 would've made a lot more sense.

For an extra $12 a year you can have day one games and access to hundreds of games instead of the limited selection.
Core seems to be a poor offering to be honest.
Multiplayer should be free on all games.

I think every option is there to funnel more people towards Game Pass Ultimate. So as already mentioned; GPU seems attractive compared to this.

But the option is still there for the annual sub for those that just want to play online.

@BRT15 That's assuming the price in Euros and USD is the same. And also assuming the other Game Pass tiers don't go up in price.

The price in GBP is £6.99 anyway, the same as Gold, so it's possible it would be €7.99 and not €9.99

Gold needed to go, it had run its course. Is this a better deal? Not really. What are the 25 games on offer?

The pricing is weird for monthly, instead of the old Gold price it's the old GP price, while the new better GP price isn't much more. But of course the old GP didn't include online play. The annual price is still the old annual/PS Plus Essentials price, though which is the most important part. Hadn't they gotten rid of the yearly Gold price before? If so this is actually a price drop, if going yearly, isn't it?

Either way I'm very sad we will no longer be getting Space Asteroid Blaster Deluxe for free anymore. Really gutted.

Microsoft in September
Gamepass is doing really well, We have more people join than ever before.

@Fenbops The games are mostly older 1st-party titles.

Forza Horizon 4
Grounded
Halo 5
Gears 5
Fallout 4

Those are the main ones.

I’ve had gamepass for a few years now. Since it’s been so long I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like anything was taken from gold, but more is added. I think those what were holding onto gold will like the new perks.

Well....so much for the glorious future of NOT having online multi-player paywalled on Consoles. Steamdeck as my daily driver is looking really appealing...if it wasn't for the GD launchers.

@Cashews Same Price - the ONLY difference is that instead of getting '24' games (2 a month), you are given access to a curated list of 25+ Game Pass games - BUT no Day 1 access - its like being given 25+ games like Fallout 4, Doom: Eternal, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 4 etc instead of 2 'indies' every month.

So effectively, you get access to more 'games' but unlike Gold, I would expect access to 'disappear' if that game gets 'rotated' out.

Game Pass Core is 'essential' - like Gold is to play 'Online'. Game Pass maybe only a bit more, but if you can't play 'online', it reduces the amount of Content you can actually play on Game Pass. You can't play some games without Gold regardless.

To me, it seems just as good as it was in some ways - you still get all the same benefits as Gold and access to 25+ games - more than the '24' you'd get with Gold...

The benefits of Game Pass is that you get access to over 500 games and Day 1 games - Ultimate adds 'online' access, PC/Cloud Game Pass, EA Access, Perks etc

Said as much in the other thread but I think this is great value. It's also diverse too. Good that there's a tier for console-only, but in a digital heavy age, is this really feasible? That remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if we see family, and then cloud, offered down the road.

I think the rotating library makes this less of a bitter pill.

I'm guessing subscriber's will see first party titles that are a few years old swap in and out thus keeping MS' costs to basically zero to provide this.

Shame that higher tiers lose some value to their sub but as many have said few are actually using it anyway and I'd bet the metrics back that up.

I don't really care about the online part. Most games I would play online aren't crossplay and just a couple of people I know have an Xbox sadly.

Really wish online play was free. That would be major pressure on PS. Line it up with PC and be a major consumer friendly practice, freeing up more money to buy more games. Got to pay back the 70 Billion dollar deal somehow. Here we are.

Hey, if the 25 titles announced get rotated around as is now being stated, then that's not too bad and a lot better than I feared.

I still think they should have dropped the tier all together and supplied free online (as on PC) so that all their formats are aligned. This would have pressured PS to make a change too.

The tiers list for MS looks about as silly as the one for PS now. Anyone fresh to the services will scratch their heads and wander what's going on :>)

Change was needed and change has happened, so its something!

So if you're a gamepass ultimate subscriber, you lose 2 (more) games per month, and gain nothing with this. We went from 4 to 0 in a hurry.

@Xeno_Aura @BRT15 https://www.xbox.com/nl-BE/xbox-game-pass/core suggests it'll still be €6.99

The recent price increase for gamepass makes more sense now. It made room for this tier 1 or core gamepass.

Bummer to lose the 2 free games per month though. I discovered a lot of great indies there that I would never try otherwise. Even with ultimate I looked forward to adding those.

No online multiplayer in basic Console GP is a massive L! Why have it in core but not in the next tier up?

OK, there are yearly options, that changes my opinion on the whole deal.

@MattWithoutFear I think you are misreading that.

The chart shows the things that get added with each tier.

EDIT: I guess this isn't the case.

@evan23 I don't think that's the case, as Online Console Multiplayer is listed in Core and Ultimate tiers

Was honestly expecting the requirement for online gameplay to go out the window.

They've also mucked up the whole appeal of game pass in that you got the games day one. Now you have to have a specific package?

It also shows they're prioritizing PC again in that the standard PC gamepass not only isn't required to play online, but it gives day one games. Console game pass does neither.

Only way it looks to have console multiplayer is through core and and ultimate and they're the only two that listed it.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Are you sure we are really missing 2 games per month with the end of Xbox Live Gold? What if those two end up in Xbox Game Pass anyway?

Microsoft has to pay a lump sum in order to put games on XLG, why not use the same resources to put 2 additional indie games on Game Pass?

Of course, once you claim a game on Xbox Live Gold it's yours for as long as you subscribe to Gold, whereas Game Pass games rotate every few months. But then you get more options on Game Pass anyway.

And for those of you asking for Xbox to keep Xbox Live Gold, but put "good games" on it... those good games are all going to Xbox Game Pass instead. They want to keep the appeal on their main service. If Guardians of the Galaxy was gifted on Xbox Live Gold instead of hitting Xbox Game Pass, and every month we got a game as good as GotG with Live Gold, there would be less value on Game Pass.

@dmcc0 Eh...I guess you are right.

I suppose it was the same before but it seems really messed up given this model. I wonder if they will fix that?

@ChromeMud how is it a poor offering. You're getting more than just gold. Gold is gone. This replaces it for the same price with better games.

@InterceptorAlpha I don't think you understand what is happening. This is better than standard Gold.
I've seen you post a few times now. You get all the perks of gold with 25 games off the bat plus more to come. It's great for new comers.

@Somebody GwG has been poor for years though. This is better for me.

@Ep_13 I will miss the GwG titles. One of the biggest perks of gamepass for me is the huge collection of indies. GwG just added 2 more every month and you never had to worry about tracking when they leave gamepass.

@Ep_13

I think it's time that a company as BIG as Microsoft should offer a basic multiplayer service for free for those that have bought games that require online functionality.

I'll probably switch to the mid tier sub to get access to Starfield. Then later maybe switch to core to keep my library of Games with Gold titles.

i don't get it... couldn't we have just gotten better games for gold?

Halo 5? Lol, that's not a great game. But on the other hand, it might revive the multiplayer. Even though the story wasn't good, it did have good gameplay and some of the best Halo multiplayer and Warzone Firefight to this day is still my favorite Halo online mode.

If Halo 5 gets revived then yay! But if not, I wish they swapped it out with MCC or something, but that's probably their best selling Halo game so they might not want to do that.

Hmmmm....

I wish we had the option of choosing to download story and multiplayer separately. It's almost 100gb right now.

@HonestHick Also a very nice sneaky trick to just make the numbers of GP subs almost double at least in one easy move. Between this and CoD showing up on GP it could push GP to some ridiculously high number of subscribers.

@InterceptorAlpha The whole deal is just there to boost you further towards paying for Ultimate tier. I am also thinking how important this requirement for MP even is today. Tons of people play F2P games which do not require you such access on console (Like Warzone).

@Utena-mobile I mean, it is better than most games they offered on the GWG for sure. Firefight and Infection were well crowded on 5 a while back. I guess when they add Firefight to Infinite (which might be fairly soon) Halo 5 will become emptier.

@BrilliantBill Lol, you're right. But are you're saying we should try to finish our achievements right now while we still can? ( T_T)

@BrilliantBill for sure it will. I mean Gamepass get’s all the marketing anyways. This makes it easier to get the message out and not to mention Xbox Live Gold kind of ran its course. It started off a pioneer in the industry. But its day is over, just found out core is $59.99 for 12 months. So that is pretty solid offering.

Sooooooo when are the 12 month deals going to be available?

I enjoyed buying 12 months of Gold on sale for $40-$50.

Or is this just more of forcing Game Pass down our throats?

How will this affect the Gold sales?

@K1LLEGAL exactly, the idea behind this is simply put everybody under the same service, "Game Pass," and keep the same price/offering old Gold members used to have, but updating the previous "free games" model with a reduced Game Pass selection.

Its actually smart and has minimum impact on the user experience, they are also keeping GPU as the obvious best value out of the other ties, but some people will still find best value out of Core or just Game Pass for their gaming experience, just like before.

What is the Pure Xbox take @fraserg? At this point I think they should include online multiplayer access with Gamepass tiers rather than introduce a Gold replacement for 1$ less than Gamepass for console. Seems arbitrary?

@GuyinPA75 game pass is gold. So yes there will be deals.

Larry Hryb is leaving and now Xbox live Gold.. it's a sad week for the history of Xbox 🥹

Just got about two years worth of Ultimate for $117 using 3-Month XBL codes at Eneba. So about $5 a month vs $16.99.

If you want cheap Ultimate, I’d advise doing it now with XBL codes (convert at 3:2). Can’t beat that price!

@ChromeMud If you want to play online and have gamepass you have to get the core and the console subscriptions. The console subscription is just Game Pass and the core subscription is just Live Gold. So nothing has changed, just the names, and instead of having to claim two games a month with Live Gold you just have 25 any given time. That's my understanding of it. Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong. So basically if you want to play online only, you get the core and if you want to play online and have Game Pass you get ultimate.

@ZYDIO

Ah ok. I'll probably switch to the console sub then as I play mostly solo these days. Starfield requires no multiplayer so I'm good with that.

GWG needed to die. This is a much better deal for people that just want Gold and not Game Pass. At least this has some quality games. Sure, those with Game Pass will lose out of the monthly free titles, but the vast majority of people won’t miss them. Most were weak to mediocre at best and who had time to play those games when they had the entire Game Pass library to choose from?

I totally understand this move from MS and support it 100%. I can’t remember the last time I even played a GWG game. I always claim them, but rarely ever play them. They won’t be missed.

@Ninfan Psychonauts 2 is brilliant, I'm part way through it at the moment.

@BRT15 It looks like only Core & Ultimate have the online multiplayer, hence the tiny price difference