New Claims Resurface On Xbox Live Going Free, But It Could Be Years Away

In the upcoming stages of new changes that were to drop for the Xbox platform, features such as unified interface and the xCloud at the time, there was heavy speculation of Xbox Live Gold going to becoming a free service. Then, the idea was tipped by the delisting of the 12-month & 24-month subscriptions being delisted previously. Not only that, but insiders throughout the video game industry also corroborates the suspicions at the time.

However, while the story gained traction online, Microsoft in one statement told that the speculation is not to be anything more. “There are no changes being made to the experience of the service or Xbox Live Gold,” a spokesperson told The Verge at the time. And while the firm went on to with increase the price for the service, then retract the decision later on, Xbox Live has not truly gone anywhere just yet.

During that, Xbox Live went to disable its requirement to enjoy free-to-play titles. But, no word on becoming a free service. According to GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb on the GrubbSnax Premium show, and transcribed by Video Game Chronicles, Xbox Live Gold is still on the menu to go free, he claims.

In the past, I’ve said Xbox Live Gold is going to go away, and when I started saying that it was when Xbox Live Gold was still required for free-to-play games. And I knew for a fact that they were going to make a change before Halo Infinite, and I thought at least it would be dropped for free-to-play games because they weren’t going to charge people to play Halo on Xbox when they weren’t charging you to play it on PC or whatever.

Then they decided to raise the price and it looked weird, right? Why would they do that if they were going to get rid of Xbox Live Gold? I just wanted to reiterate, Xbox Live Gold is still on a board somewhere saying ‘this is going to go away at some point’. Whether or not they’re actively talking about it right now, I don’t know, but they still have it on a roadmap saying “Xbox Live Gold will be dropped at some point in the future”.

[Dropping Gold] might take years, because the focus right now still very much is getting Game Pass into a very healthy position. It’s okay right now, but […] before E3 things were starting to kind of slow down and I think there were maybe some people at Microsoft getting a little bit antsy about it because they’re like, “we do need this thing to grow”, the problem is they were waiting for big games to come to the service.

Additionally, Grubb elaborates on Microsoft’s current status with Xbox Game Pass following its Xbox-Bethesda E3 Showcase and how the firm is looking to hold a better standing with that user base before pulling the plug on Xbox Live Gold. “It seems that E3 really helped Game Pass hit its stride where people can now look into the future and say: ‘If I get it now I’m going to have all these games, but then there’s going to be this and this and this right in the immediate future, and then these big things on the horizon.’

“So Microsoft’s just kind of [keeping their] heads down on getting user acquisition, and that means ‘Xbox Live will go away but we need to get to a certain threshold with Game Pass before we can make that choice and unplug that revenue source because we have enough coming from something else’.”

While the future is still officially unclear for Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft is already going in a new direction for the service with Xbox Network. But, the firm did clarify that the new program is not to replace the initial service and Xbox Live Gold is to remain well after. You can read the full report by heading here.

Are you convinced Xbox Live Gold could go free later on?

Source: Video Game Chronicles