Microsoft has announced today that the Xbox Live Gold restriction has officially been removed from all free-to-play games on the Xbox platform, meaning that you don't need to pay anything in order to play them on your Xbox console.
The decision to do this was originally announced back in January following a negative reaction to a planned (and later reversed) Xbox Live Gold price hike, and Xbox Insiders have been testing the removal of the Gold requirement for a few weeks now. In all, over 50 games will now be entirely free-to-play on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
"Today, we are sharing more details on our plans to make online multiplayer in free-to-play games available on Xbox without an Xbox Live Gold membership.
As part of listening to your feedback, this change will take place starting today, and all Xbox players will be able to access online multiplayer at no charge for a library of over 50 free-to-play games that support online multiplayer."
Pleased about this? Will you be taking advantage? Let us know down in the comments below.
[source news.xbox.com]
Comments 9
This is a huge win for Xbox, Removing that paywall to play FTP games is a game changer..
Finally! It was kind of stupid to have to still pay to be able to play free games with other people. Nintendo's online offering is atrocious, and even they didn't require this. Glad that this isn't the case anymore.
They should remove the gold requirement for Xbox exclusives that are also on pc aswell
This should of been standard anyway its no game changer as both playstation and nintendo have offered free online for ftp games for years. But hopefully this move will increase those games xbox population especially on games that don't have cross play, this will bring more player and revenue to these developers
Can't say this 'matters' to me as I have had Gold (now as a part of GPU) for many many years so I was never affected by this. It makes sense that 'free to play' is 'free' - not behind a subscription pay wall but the reality is this hasn't affected me and doubt it will affect me in the future.
That being said, I understand that for others, this is a big deal and as I said above, it makes sense for F2P games especially to be excluded from Gold.
Personally, I believe ALL games should be exempt from any pay wall to play online. Its criminal in my opinion to have to buy a Subscription to access ALL the content/modes from ANY game - even more so IF I have paid money to buy all that content.
Its criminal to sell a game like Gears 5 for example for £60 when you can only play a fraction of that content unless you pay for Gold too. Console gamers are already paying a 'Premium' for their games compared to PC and then have to pay a subscription on top of their Broadband fee too...
Something that should've been free the entire time....
Well should have been free before but still happy about this.
I’m not trying to start something. This is an honest question. How are the new Xbox sales, compared to PS5? I’m seeing so much good press about the Xbox, but I’m not seeing anything about sales. I know it’s not selling in Japan.
@outsider83 its selling at a pace just as strong as the PS5. Its basically in the same issue as the PS5 is atm, but the PS5 restocks at a slightly faster pace.
and yes, japan still doesn't care for the xbox.
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