Microsoft is Gaming Xbox Live Gold (Premium)

I understand that Microsoft wants to push customers to its more expensive Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. But its treatment of Xbox Live Gold subscribers is inexcusable.

Folks, money is tight. We’re in a period of great economic instability, with rising prices, ongoing component shortages, and inflation driving up interest rates. And yet, Microsoft, like so many Big Tech giants, is offering ever-more expensive monthly subscription services across its productivity and gaming franchises, with prices expected to go up yet again in 2023.

I get it, sort of: Microsoft’s costs are going up too. But when you think about the enormous profits and revenues that this behemoth generates, it’s hard to feel any empathy when its customers are suffering even more.

More to the point, it’s hard to justify all these monthly subscription costs. Xbox Live Gold, the original Microsoft gaming paid subscription, is still kicking, but it’s not clear what we’re paying for. The primary benefit is the ability to play multiplayer games on Xbox Live, which seems crazy to me: that should be free. But you also get two “free” games every month, though they’re only free while your subscription is active; if you miss a month, they’re gone, poof. (And you used to get four games per month.) You also get generally small discounts when you buy games digitally from Microsoft directly. So not much.

Xbox Live Gold has cost about $60 per year for several years now, but you’d never know that looking at the Xbox website: if you try to purchase this subscription directly from the company, you’re only offered two choices: $9.99 per month, which is an incredible $120 per year, double the normal cost, and $24.99 for three months, which is $100 per year. What? You must visit Amazon.com or drive to some local retailer to find a 12-month digital card.

I’ve paid as little as $35 for a year of Xbox Live Gold, when I’ve gotten a 12-month membership on a physical gift card on sale. But the Microsoft Store also doesn’t offer these cards, which should normally cost $59.99. It offers the two deals noted above, plus a 6-month membership for $39.99, or about $80 per year. They’re doing everything they can to overcharge you, in other words.

You may have seen the recent story about Epic Games paying a $520 million fine to the FTC, in part to account for it using so-called “dark patterns” to cause customers to buy things they didn’t mean to. What Microsoft is doing is similar thematically but much less sophisticated: it simply pretends that the lower-cost annual membership doesn’t exist, leading customers to spend more than they should.

And no, it’s not the same as what we do with Thurrott Premium, where you can pay annually or by the month: aside from the vast difference between the world’s second most valuable company and our tiny company, we don’t hide the annual choice. No, Microsoft, like all other Big Tech companies, is doing everything it can to bleed as much money as it can from every customer as often as it can. Including underhanded tactics like this.

Of course, Microsoft doesn’t even want to you even buy an Xbox Live Gold subscription. That’s chump change to them. They want you to buy an Xbox Game Pass subscription, preferably the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate version that costs $15 per month and includes Xbox Cloud Gaming, its cloud streaming offering. Here, Microsoft has gotten even more diabolical: it doesn’t even offer annual cards for this subscription, nor does Amazon, just one- and three-month cards (codes) that both cost $14.99 per month ($180 per year). Unless there’s a sale somewhere, you will pay $15 per month. There is no annual offering, let alone savings, anymore.

I know, the math here is tricky and it depends on how you game. If you or your kids play a lot of different games—or, more to the point, you buy several games each year—then a Game Pass subscription can make sense … assuming the games you want are even part of the library. But if you just play or buy one or two games each year, Xbox Live Gold makes a lot more sense, assuming you want to play online. If you don’t, then maybe no subscription makes more sense.

And boy does Microsoft not want that.

I only play Call of Duty, basically, and I can’t justify the $9.99 (Xbox Game Pass for console) or $14.99 (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) it costs each month just so I can play the game I already paid $70 for online and never access the Game Pass or Cloud Gaming libraries. So $60 per year it is. You know, assuming I can find it: again, Microsoft pretends this thing doesn’t even exist.

Dark pattern? Nah. Just dark.