Near the beginning of August of this year, rumors began to circulate surrounding the future of Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft's required subscription service to play games online on Xbox consoles. To be more specific, these rumors seemed to indicate that Microsoft was considering dropping the service altogether with players no longer needing to pay to play online. These rumors began to take hold in the gaming community at large once Microsoft removed the option to purchase a 12-month subscription of the service, forcing players to switch to either a monthly or a quarterly for their online service.
However, the rumors were soon squashed when a Microsoft spokesperson issued, confirming the company has "no plans to discontinue Xbox Live Gold at this time." And while Microsoft never went on to clarify why it was ditching the yearly subscription option for its online service, that's likely due to another service offered by the console maker needing to take more of the spotlight.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
In April of 2017, Xbox announced that it was creating a new version of its Xbox Game Pass service. Called Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, the service not only provided players with Microsoft's attempt at being the "Netflix of Gaming" on console but with all of the benefits of Xbox Live Gold for the low price of $15 a month. While this was the initial offering of the service, it has grown quite a bit since then by including the PC version of Game Pass, Game Streaming on Android devices, and will soon include a subscription to EA Play; all for the constant price of $15 every month.
For many, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is considered one of the best deals in gaming. Although $15 isn't much more expensive than the $10 monthly fee for Xbox Live Gold, it seems that Game Pass offers players with a lot more value in their overall Xbox gaming experience. With this in mind, it stands to reason that Microsoft would be in favor of shifting focus to the service that has the most perceived value in order to entice new players to come to its platform and prompt older players to stay.
And this notion seems to ring true for Microsoft and its strategy with next generation consoles. Much of the marketing coming from Xbox has not been about the Xbox Series X or Series S, but rather it seems focused on selling as many players it possibly can on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. While some may see this as Xbox not being confident in its new boxes, others might say that pushing a subscription service rather than hardware at the beginning of a fresh console cycle is a bold new direction for the console maker.
This "bold direction" for Microsoft is quite smart when the time is taken to survey the company's grand plan. Most players would likely agree that Xbox had a tough time competing against the likes of PlayStation in this current generation. While Xbox One unit sales were low in comparison to that of the PS4, Microsoft found another avenue to make itself successful during the generation.
Xbox Game Pass vs Xbox Live Gold
By creating a new subscription service for a slightly higher price than that of its online membership and attempting to push it on as many platforms as possible like PC and mobile devices. And while Game Pass hasn't been exactly profitable in the short term, Xbox hopes that it will pay off in the long haul as it continues to expand the player base as well as its library.
This type of growth simply does not seem possible for something like Xbox Live Gold, whose whole schtick is to allow players to play online on Xbox consoles. With Microsoft pushing its Play Anywhere initiative, the need for something like an online membership could be seen as an antiquated concept.
While some may argue that they don't want to miss out on the benefit of Xbox Games With Gold, others might argue that subscription's free games that have been offered over the past several months have been quite week. For the month of November 2020, players that have an active Xbox Live Gold membership will receive Aragami: Shadow Edition, Swimsanity!, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Lego Indiana Jones as their free titles. And while these titles are fine in their own right, the list pales in comparison to the games on offer for PlayStation Plus subscribers like the meme'd Bugsnax as a free PS5 launch title.
The Future of Xbox Subscriptions?
While Games With Gold has been disappointing over the past few entries, Xbox Game Pass has seemingly only gotten stronger with each addition. Most recently, it was announced that players would be able to play Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order through the EA Play subscription that comes with their Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. And this is but one of many quality titles that is being added to Game Pass on a regular basis. If this is the pattern that players can expect from both Games With Gold and Game Pass in the next generation, it might behoove Microsoft to stop the former and continue to push players towards the grand library of the latter.
Game Pass is not without its downsides, however. While games are being on a fairly regular basis to the service's library, there are quite a few that are being removed as well. While this can range from smaller titles like The Talos Principle to massive AAA games like Red Dead Redemption 2, each removal can sting and can be a painful reminder for players that they do not own these games like they would using Games With Gold. That being said, it's quite likely that players that engage in services like Xbox Game Pass know what it is they're signing up for and have had similar experiences on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
While it seems that Microsoft is committed to continuing the Xbox Live Gold service, it seems that its attention may be better suited focusing on selling Xbox Game Pass Ultimate instead. With a massive library of games to choose from and the service's overall value proposition, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate seems to set Microsoft up for a major success in the coming generation; a success that is likely not as easily secured if it continues to split its attention between Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold.