Does the program even make sense?

Until now, if you wanted to play any free multiplayer game on Xbox One or Xbox Series S / X, you had to have an Xbox Live Gold account. Nothing more. After a few weeks of testing, Microsoft has removed the prerequisite, so now free-to-play games are available to all Xbox Live users, and Xbox party chat and Looking For Groups (LFG) are also open. And what is available among these free games? There are more than 50 in total, and the list includes some very good sounding titles such as Destiny 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, Apex Legends and some more.

The decision to unlock free access is reportedly the result of "sandblasting" when Microsoft doubled the annual subscription to Xbox Live Gold in mid-January, but then quickly changed its mind due to severe user criticism. But since the damage has already been done, they are now trying to undo it with "candies" like the one we are writing about. The matter is actually a bit strange, because instead of increasing the price of the program, a situation has arisen in which we can legitimately ask whether the Gold program still makes sense. If access to free games, Xbox party chat and Looking For Groups (LFG) are available to everyone, does paying for Xbox Live Gold membership still make sense? Owners of the newer Xbox One, Xbox Series S / X consoles will certainly not, but Xbox 360 owners who still need to be members of the Gold program for the aforementioned features will receive the "advantages".

So what does Microsoft expect from all this? In addition to the certainly greater attractiveness of the new consoles, it all coincides with moves that lead to the simplification of the Xbox "ecosystem", where eventually only the "Xbox network" should be available, while users who want something more would move to "Xbox Game Pass", where there are even more free games. But about that another time...

Source: Microsoft

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