Announced earlier this year the possibility of Play free multiplayer games without subscribing to Xbox Live Gold is now available to all Xbox One and Xbox Series players! Remember: in January 2021, Microsoft announced an increase in the price of its Gold subscription, despite players hoping the service would go away. The initiative had real meaning, forcing Xbox to pull out quickly while also announcing that free-to-play games will soon no longer be affected by the Xbox Live Gold account requirement to play online. A strong signal to appease the gaming community.
Free-to-play accessible to all, a competitive advantage?
While Nintendo Switch players will still need to purchase a Nintendo Network membership in order to play free-to-play games online, Playstation, PC and mobile gamers will not. This relaxation of the rules of Xbox Live Gold, which has long been demanded by gamers, therefore enables Xbox to level out on competing platforms. Better still, it narrows the gap that currently exists between Xbox players on consoles and Windows 10. At a time when Microsoft is advocating a unified ecosystem that includes Xbox consoles, PCs, and smartphones, the differences in pricing terms persist throats of some. As a reminder, players can access Minecraft’s online multiplayer mode for free on smartphones and PCs, for example, but not on Xbox, where players must subscribe to Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. A historical difference that we can hope will one day go away. For now, it’s out of the question anyway
What exactly is changing?
What changes? From a commercial point of view, a lot of things actually! For the most modest of budgets, the peace of mind that you can buy an Xbox One or Xbox Series S andAccess to 96 games without having to pay a cent. Fortnite, Rocket League, Destiny 2, Apex Legends or Roblox – all of them can now be played without a subscription. It should also be noted that at the end of the year, Halo Infinite will also be affected as the game’s multiplayer mode will be offered for free.