While this may change in the future, the fact that a regular Game Pass subscription still doesn't include online multiplayer seems like a deliberate choice to drive players toward the pricier options. However, as most Xbox Live Gold users are primarily paying for access to online multiplayer, their only option besides Core will be to pay for the highest tier, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. By providing access to a limited selection of Game Pass titles, it's possible that Microsoft hopes Core will showcase the convenience of this service and potentially motivate users to switch to a subscription that features the full game library. Most of Core's early userbase will be players who transferred from a preexisting Xbox Live Gold subscription. For these reasons, Gold's name change to Xbox Game Pass Core serves as a solution to its current issues.īeyond these basic improvements, Xbox Game Pass Core may also attract new subscribers to the higher tiers of Game Pass. Regardless of its current state, it was guaranteed to be shuttered at some point.

Xbox Live Gold is essentially the last remaining product of Microsoft's early online gaming era. Starting with Xbox Live being renamed to Xbox Network in 2021, Microsoft has gradually rebranded its online services to reflect their cross-platform functionality. Since Gold hasn't seen a price drop to reflect these losses, many feel that the service now offers far less than it used to.Įven if Xbox Live Gold had maintained a consistent quality or at least lowered its fees, it still would have likely undergone the same rebranding at some point. In October 2022, Xbox 360 games were phased out of the program entirely, which cut down the number of free monthly offers from four games to only two. While this never changed for the Xbox 360 titles, the Xbox One games required an active subscription to keep using. In its early years on the Xbox 360, the free games offered through the program could still be used even after the subscription ended. Likewise, Games with Gold was once a major selling point for Xbox Live Gold but has lost much of its original value over time.

Game pass microsoft