Microsoft has stealthily cancelled the option to buy a year’s subscription to its Xbox Live Gold service, which lets gamers play Xbox One games online.
It’s still possible to buy 1-month (£6.99) and 3-month (£17.99) subscriptions to Xbox Live Gold, and Microsoft’s £10.99-per-month Ultimate Game Pass subscription service (which adds free access to over 100 Xbox One games on top of Xbox Live Gold) remains available as previously.
Microsoft appears to be cleaning house subscription-wise ahead of the launch of its next-generation Xbox Series X console. Given that the Xbox Series X will be launched before the end of this year, the company’s move to discontinue annual Xbox Live Gold subscriptions suggests that it will phase out Xbox Live Gold when the Series X launches.
Microsoft did not announce the removal of the 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription, but True Achievements did manage to extract the following statement from a Microsoft spokesperson: “At this time, Xbox has decided to remove the 12 months Xbox Live Gold SKU from the Microsoft online Store. Customers can still sign up for a one-month or three-month Xbox Live Gold subscription online through the Microsoft Store.”
Last week, Microsoft announced that from this September, another element will be added to Ultimate Game Pass: free access to Project xCloud, the company’s service which allows gamers to stream Xbox games to multiple devices and play them.
Microsoft has been heavily pushing Ultimate Game Pass for a while now, and as it prepares to launch the Xbox Series X – the company confirmed it has ended production of the Xbox One X and the All-Digital version of the Xbox One S, in order to ramp up manufacturing of the Xbox Series X – it appears to be preparing the ground to simplify the various online subscriptions available to Xbox owners.
We would place a bet on Microsoft completely dropping Xbox Live Gold for the Xbox Series X, presumably in favour of Ultimate Game Pass – currently, the company also offers Game Pass for £7.99 per month, which brings access to the same games as Ultimate Game Pass, but doesn’t include Xbox Live Gold.
If, on launching the Xbox Series X, the company decided to offer free access to Xbox Live, it could conceivably narrow its raft of online subscription options down to just Ultimate Game Pass.
We may find out more on the subject from Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Series X games showcase, due to stream across various channels at 5pm BST on Thursday 23 July. As ever, we’ll keep you updated.
