Xbox Live Gold going up to $100 for year subscription?

The title is a question because I'm not entirely clear on it. I was just on GameSpot reading a news article about Microsoft delisting the 12-month subscription, so now only the month-long and three-month-long subscriptions are available from here on out. The thing that caught my attention was that in the article, it says due to this, 'it will apparently cost about $100 to get a year of Xbox Live Gold'. If this is true, how does this sit with everyone? If it's not true, please help me understand. If this is true, and the rumor of prices for games going up is as well, I am not a fan.

I mean i didn't even think people only bought Gold anymore.

I pay for Games pass Ultimate. I Barely play games online so a gold only sub is pointless to me.

We’ll know for sure on Thursday, but the scuttlebutt is that online multiplayer may no longer be behind a paywall and the only thing they will charge you for us Gamepass and xCloud (or whatever it ends up being called). I think that makes a lot more sense than just upping the price on Gold.

Amazon still has 12 month membership cards for $60.

I can't imagine Microsoft giving up the Xbox Live revenue. Between Gold, Game pass, and Xcloud I figured that they might take a hit on price and make that up in paid services. Curious too see if anything's revealed about this on Thursday.

(I don't have Live Gold or an Xbox so don't have a real foot in this race)

I'm crossing my fingers that the service is going free and they don't want people buying one year cards when it is coming in just over a few months.

With all of the "Get 3 months of Game Pass for $1!" promotions they've done it seems bizarre to me that they would suddenly increase the price of Gold. Also, fwiw, my impression is that most people who buy Gold buy 3 or 12 month cards or buy Gold while it's on sale, but the standard monthly cost is still $9.99/mo...which is more than $100 a year.

If they make Xbox Live free, that is an absolute game changer for me. I haven't paid for Live in about 3 years, but I would love to play The MCC online with friends.

Their intent, now that their is perceived value in the service is to, much like netflix, creep the price on you. It's that foolish cord-cutters mentality that them getting over the man is somehow going to endure. You cant just cut the cord you literally have to not want to plug in, to actually win.

I posted a thread on this earlier about this preparing them to announce that multiplayer is free. They will likely do this dog and pony show about how that they used to think that paying members would behave and they were wrong. Toxicity blah blah blah. So in order to play free to play games and multiplayer you just need to have a silver account. But as a gold member you can turn off those silver accounts completely or engage in some new tools they have to report and permaban bad actors.

Current gold members will be upgraded to Gamepass without XCloud. And current gamepass members will be upgraded to gamepass plus xcloud. So you've got a little bit of time to stack stack stack those disconts because theyre going bye bye in a year or 2 and you will be either paying $15 a month for gamepass and liking it or not paying anything for multiplayer and being fine with it. Players like me have stacked enough games in our digital library and are apalled by the thought of the next battle royale that they are going to lose subscribers anyway. Why not make everybody happy. I'd love to play the Division 2 but i refuse to sign up for a service.

The free Ps3 multiplayer was an absolute selling point. At the launch of a new console free multiplayer is key and Microsoft has the algorithms to wack-a-mole bad actors..

If I get Ultimate and Xcloud and all that for $100, 100% worth it for me.

Think this just means it will be rolled into game pass, not that multiplayer will be free. Which should be fine to most people, because game pass is a tremendous deal. I haven't bought a single Xbox game since signing up for game pass a few months ago. Absolutely worth it.

I think regardless we need to expect something "big" happening within the next two years or whenever all of the folk (self included...) who topped off live to switch to gamepass ultimate expire. We're going to gradually see the service get even better before we get told "yo, price went up"

"Live is no longer relevant because multiplayer is free" makes the most sense. Especially if MS are increasing their PC presence as the past year or so indicates. And it is a good power play/value proposition before saying "be tee dubs, the x-sex is 700 bucks" 30 seconds after Sony does.

And as we shift more toward a streaming future this even makes sense on its own. My understanding is that for a humble/live/ps+ giveaway devs are more or less compensated for how many licenses they give away/expect to give away. Whereas, with services like gamepass, xcloud, and ps now, it makes more sense to pay for seats. Getting rid of live would get rid of IGCs and would mean that every game can potentially charge per install or even per time played (I have no idea how gamepass works for devs) regardless of if it is a "free" monthly game or a "Free" streamed game or whatever.

I end up with just about enough rewards points to keep ultimate "free". I'm good for a while. Not sure how they make money, but I'm sure I'm somehow paying more in marketing bux or eyeshare or brainshare or whatever other nightmare scenario that ad dudes are currently concocting.

I can see this sucking for people that just wanted Gold so they can keep playing Apex or something and have no interest in GamePass or trying new games. If they somehow make it so online play is no longer behind a paywall and the subscription you do pay comes with a lot more perks like xcloud and GamePass then that would be a win for everyone.

So is the change just on the website? It's still available on the console itself?
I ask because maybe they're just changing the wording of the subscriptions due to the addition of game pass and xcloud, it might reappear in a day or two.
I can't imagine they'd suddenly ask everyone to pay more without warning people first.

I think Xbox Live is actually a decent value compared to the Playstation stuff simply because you actually keep the games you get. Paying for online is dumb and there is no way I would do that (which is probably why I don't have a console anymore).

I am wondering about the price of these consoles and next gen services though, as the global pandemic is crippling the global economy right now, minimum wage was never adjusted for inflation, and some 20 million (americans atleast) are out of work right now. How can you justify raising prices, even from a business perspective. Sure money is less valuable than 10-20 years ago, but people are also making less money than 10-20 years ago (even if the salary seems the same), and now we are entering a possible depression type recession.

If I was sony/microsoft I would actually do the opposite. I would have special day one deals where games are 20% off, I would put the initial consoles on sale and take a loss for a couple years and sale the on demand games as a service (even at 100$ a year etc). If one of them did this, they would win the hearts of people globally IMO. Short term loss would = lifetime gains and would help a lot of people afford to entertain themselves in this hard climate right now.

I think the MCC is playable online without Gold anyway. Maybe worth trying it just to see.

@justin258: I was unaware! I've gotta go check then. Thanks!

Not entirely. You get to keep the Xbox 360 games they give away, but the Xbox One games need an active subscription just like PS Plus.

@arjailer: since June 2013 til now that have given away 175 titles. We will say half of those are 360 games. Even if you spent the maximum of $10 a month. For $840 you got 80 games to keep. Even if only 5% are excellent you got 4 amazing titles to keep forever. Versus the same spent on PlayStation you got a big goose egg. Plus the most important thing is that cloud saves are free Xbox. You have to have plus for clouds saves on switch and PlayStation.

@justin258: Just to revisit this, you do need Xbox live to play MCC online on XBO.

I could see Microsoft phasing out Xbox Gold and just having Ultimate Game Pass for $14.99 a month which I wonder if Microsoft would increase to $20 a month. I haven't had Xbox Live since I used that Ultimate Game Pass for $1 and was able to up my Xbox LIve to February 2020. I actually like Ultimate Game Pass as I was able to play hundreds of games though the discounts for them weren't cheap compared to Playstation Plus.

@psmgamer: What would be really dope and i'd be on board for this is if the service were $19.99 a month but that amount could be used as credit towards buying one game on the service. And no you wouldnt get the difference back if the game were only $4.99. I would totally be fine with the increased price and it would really expose me to more games and it would be like a tip jar to the developer. I am over getting 360 games.. i've got everything i want and i hate multiplayer with the fire of 6,000 burning suns.

Same. I feel bad for anyone who didn't do that, which is why I'm a little confused by this thread, it just occurred to me that it's possible someone didn't..

@north6: The clock runs out on those kind of offers. I reached a point where i was buying gold just for the free 360 games since i wasnt interested in multiplayer. The last time i had gold was october of 2019. Even if i bought a year for $60 + $1 for the ultimate upgrade its still just an empty purchase for me. It's not like gamepass holds exclusive access to playing games. And if you guys arent careful that may come to pass where you have to be subscribed to play the next halo.

I have a backlog and new games are like new cars... i can't drive 2 at a time. In this case i cant play 150 games at the same time. So unless Microsoft runs the same gimmick they tried to run with zune nothing they say about gamepass is going to entice me to use that service. If i want to play multiplayer i will use my playstation to play the free to play games for free... the stars aligning on people having the same games, xbox live, necessary dlc, and the latest updates downloaded and installed is impossible for anything but the free to play stuff.

Multiplayer is dead for traditional games and needs to be free on the service. Gamepass needs to give me something permanent the way games with gold gave me permanent 360 games... i'm not subscribing to another service.

With an alternate take:

Once the quarantine started in March, I talked three of my close friends that live around the country into getting Game Pass along with me. Now we get together online twice a week and we've been able to play 7 or 8 games together that we would have never all purchased. But since they are all on the service and the only barrier is making sure we have all downloaded the games ahead of time, we've really gotten into some games like Remnant: From the Ashes and World War Z that we would not have tried otherwise.

These kind of threads kind of have me wonder a little bit. With all this bitterness and general scorn on Xbox, what kind of response would a subscription based SteamPass do to pc people? Would all this negativity carry over there too? With SteamPass, what’s the point of Steam sales sure, but GamePass devs say that sales actually improve once their game is on gamepass. 🤔

What scorn and negativity? Game Pass has been universally praised as a great service? Even people that dislike the Xbox itself in it's current iteration will admit that Game Pass is alright.

An interesting aspect of Game Pass is that it has boosted sales of certain games that got on it. In one article I read this phenomenon was attributed to people coming over a friends house and playing something on their system through Game Pass and then going home and buying that same game for themselves on the Xbox or PC or even PS4 if it's there. I'm not sure how prevalent this trend is but in that situation it seems like Game Pass and Steam would exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship.

The real question is are you willing to pay $14.99 a month for the service. Sure there are currently sales. But are you willing to pay $180 a year for the service. I’m not so I’m not going to train myself to “need” the service. Putting up a “how many games do you own” thread. But I own between epic, PlayStation and genesis mini, uplay, Steam, Xbox, and iOS about 450 games. Increase your available games by 20% is not an incentive. All that spare change in your couch.. I’ll kick you another 20%. Has your life changed? No.

Xbox One has been my second console and I've been quite happy throwing £45 a year for Gold on something I don't use that regularly, but if mp isn't going to be free this would be a deal breaker nearly double the price, the Xbox would harder to dip in and out of.

More evidence that "xbox live gold" is being phased out, or that multiplayer will be free: Halo Infinite is being listed as having free multiplayer: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/07/retail-listing-points-to-free-to-play-multiplayer-for-halo-infinite/

This also totally tracks with the Nintento + Xbox Live stuff. Microsoft might be pushing to be the cross-platform friends base, and having that be free means adoption will be much quicker.

Edit: the article was updated, Microdoft confirmed multiplayer will be free for Halo Infinite.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Halo/status/1289298976550731776

Charging for online play in 2020 is hysterical

@blu3v3nom07: My only point was that I am not for more price hikes, especially upon possible other price hikes. When I made the thread, Game Pass was not on my mind, or the possibility of free online play. So, the discussion has evolved past the original post I made. I will say though, while Game Pass is neat, I still prefer buying my games and knowing I will have those games, even if a developer or Microsoft plans to keep their games on the system for the entire generation. It also seems to be the case that game prices, as a whole, will not be higher in price so it's dependant on developer/publisher. If online play becomes free, that's a plus for my brothers and I honestly; I don't think we'll buy into Game Pass as it's not something that's necessary for us. That said, we'll have to see when we get more info.

@fourthline: Yeah, it's $180/year, but on the other hand as a subscriber I never need to buy a first-party MS game ever again. Whereas before Game Pass I was buying Forza, Halo, Gears, etc. Throw in the third-party games I also don't need to pay for anymore and I think the service justifies its cost just fine.

@tds418: Sound logic. But the problem is if you owned a Xbox One the entire generation 2013-2020 you would be spending 7*180= 1260. At that rate you could buy every game you wanted, even on a whim, and you have 21 games that you can keep, loan, or sell. I just donated like 50 games to my goodwill. Those games will have legs and some poor kid might get a $5 game that becomes his Pokémon or Halo or whatever. Game pass is designed monetize gaming in a very gross way. But have at it.

@fourthline: if Gold becomes free, then I'd imagine Ultimate goes away and there's only GamePass for $10. Or Ultimate becomes GamePass + xCloud, where you wouldn't even need a console.

$1260 for 7 years of games is really...not bad? That's three $60 games/year. Less than three full games per year if they go up to $70. It also gives me access to hundreds of games, not just 21. I'm not saying everyone needs to be super excited about Game Pass, but it's clearly not a bad value. Just like Spotify is clearly not a bad value if you listen to a lot of music, even though there are legitimate criticisms you can make about the service.

I also don't buy games physically any more so I wouldn't be loaning or selling my games even if I wasn't using Game Pass.

@tds418: I think the precedent that apple arcade is sending with games not available for purchase, only playable with a subscription, is troubling. Are you comfortable with all Microsoft's games being only available if you're a current subscriber. Are you the drug pusher that has to push the service onto your less savy friends susceptible to forgetting to unsubscribe or dont seek out the online deals? What happens when they break out tiers for the service? Day 1 only for Platinum tier? So they have a subscriber for life with you? Remember the shadyness that they pulled requiring you to have xbox live to even watch Netflix? Expect some variation on shady going forward.

@justin258: You don't need gold subscription if you're playing MCC online on PC. You do need it if you're playing online on Xbox One though.

See, this is the kind of stuff that bothers me. Just because you prefer to "own" your games (whatever that means in the world of software licenses) doesn't mean there isn't room for a subscription service. Many of the games I regularly play, like Destiny and WoW, are going to die at some point no matter if I "own" the game or not. If MS pulls something from the service I really want to keep playing I can just buy it.

And no, I don't think I've ever pushed Game Pass on to anybody, to answer your question. I'm simply pointing out that if you are someone that would like to play a lot of different games and are not too bothered with games potentially leaving the service it's a good value. I think that's a fairly uncontroversial opinion and certainly not worth being called a drug pusher over.