Microsoft backtracks Xbox Live Gold price hike, also ends membership requirement for Free-to-Play Games [2021-01-22]

https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ae4029

Found on Reddit.

Supposedly, they’re not supposed to be put out yet.

Mod Update:

So the replacement for 12 month? Lame ass if true

I will never pay that much for 6 months. Microsoft has been really weird with Gold lately. We need clarification on what’s going on soon.

2 Likes

One month is currently 10usd so I assume that will rise to 12-15 as an incentive to actually buy the 6 months card

Kinda sucks as we haven’t had a jump like this in some time, but it’s always inevitable :confused:

Is the 12 month option still available?

Shrug

I have GPU stacked till next year.

But you can’t buy 12 months of Gold anymore? I really want to know.

Best Buy still has options.

Looks like it’s mostly 1 and 3 months now.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/microsoft-xbox-live-12-month-gold-membership-digital/1419578.p?skuId=1419578&ref=212&loc=1

Only from unofficial suppliers.

The reason is because Microsoft will be changing the way Gold accounts work with the releases of the Series X later in the year. They are basically scrapping Gold, that is why you can`t purchase 12 months as the service will cease to exist in its current form, 3 months is the maximum you can now purchase.

Source: Redirecting

So MS way of getting people to buy 1 year of Gold will be to get them to subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate? Very bad practice imo.

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I think the assumption here is that already who already had a year of gold already converted.

Don’t ask me man, I’m just reporting this.

If it rose to $15/mo that would allow them to basically get rid of it without getting rid of it. They’d just shift everyone with XBL over to GPU automatically. It’d literally convert just about all XBL users to GPU subs instantly. I’ve wondered if they might do this for a while now.

Yeah they might just can gold down the line, its fine for people like myself who plays a variety of games - but for those grinding on game such as cod, destiny, fifa, gta v - those people are really getting kicked in the ass it seems

Edit: As you said below, in a year we will probably only have ‘Xbox Ultimate’ rather than the multiple options

I think their goal here is to put all of their services under a single sub (GPU). I bet GP (base) no longer exists a year from now. I can see them just automatically converting XBL subs to GPU subs this way. It sucks for anyone who doesn’t want Game Pass, xCloud or GPU perks, but I’d question how many ppl that actually represents at this stage. Those ppl would pay more and get GPU instead, but the same customers also likely save lots of $$$ by getting access to GP library.

Granted, the funneling approach is removing an option. The alternative coulda been to just outright shelve Gold but I bet that would be a much worse reception tbh.

Just put XBL Gold out of its misery already. It has no more place in the Xbox ecosystem. Why do Xbox console users arbitrarily have to pay to play any game online (even free-to-play ones) when there is no online paywall on PC or cloud.

9 Likes

I’m just glad we can still share Gold, so it’s 50/50 for me and my brother.

Still, for six months that’s way too much.

That’s way too expensive. It shouldnt exist at all tbh, not with all this talk about the Xbox ecosystem. Why is there a tax on console MP but not on PC? Yeah, no that is bs.

I subscribe to XGP Ultimate so it doesn’t matter to me personally but considering that PC MP is free, GwG is sheit compared to PS+ games and F2P MP is actually F2P on PS this just looks bad.

6 Likes

It’s a six month card and 1 month is already like 9.99-10.99 right?

Seems kind of 1-1 translation.

In general, I don’t play online whatsoever as it’s not my thing but I agree with you completely. Xbox Live Gold should be killed off.

Does that make it any less expensive or invalidate any of my points?