Xbox Just Keeps Getting Better (Premium)

And no, I’m not just talking about Activision Blizzard: with the shift from Xbox Live Gold to Xbox Game Pass Core, Microsoft has once again made its video gaming ecosystem better for everyone.

As Laurent noted in his coverage of this shift, Xbox Live Gold debuted in 2002, one year after the original Xbox console, and its key benefit, then as now, is online multiplayer gaming. Xbox Live Gold was, at the start, one of the two tiers for the Xbox Live online service, the other being Xbox Live Silver. But things changed, as they will. And over time, Xbox Live became Xbox Network. Xbox Live Silver became Xbox Live Free. And Xbox Live Gold improved. For example, in 2013, Microsoft added a perk called Games with Gold. This changed over time, but it provided 2 to 4 free OG Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S titles each month to subscribers, games that would remain in their libraries while that subscription was active.

But things changed, again. In 2017, Microsoft introduced Xbox Game Pass, its second paid Xbox subscription. The original version of the service was just for Xbox consoles, and it provided subscribers with a limited number of game titles they could download and install to their devices and play while subscribed (and barring any storage issues), plus all the perks of Xbox Live Gold. And Game Pass expanded over time, first with many more games. But then with additional subscriptions, including PC Game Pass, a similar service for PC gamers, and Game Pass Ultimate, which combines all the features and perks of Xbox Game Pass (console) and PC Game Pass, and adds Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s game streaming service.

Game Pass is often described as the “Netflix of gaming,” though that is technically incorrect since you stream Netflix movies and TV shows; perhaps Xbox Cloud Gaming is the better comparison. But no matter, the point is there: as a subscriber, you gain access to a large library of game titles for a low monthly price. That much, at least, is like Netflix, and like music subscription services such as Spotify.

But Game Pass also triggered some obvious questions about the future of Xbox as a platform. Among those questions was, where does this leave Xbox Live Gold? I and many others believed that Xbox Live Gold’s days were numbered. And there have certainly been hints in the intervening years that Microsoft thought so too.

And yeah, that’s finally happening. But this week’s announcement adds an interesting new twist. Because Xbox Live Gold isn’t just going away as brand, it’s changing and, I think, improving as it shifts to a new offering called Xbox Game Pass Core. So it’s perhaps useful to examine how Game Pass Core differs from its predecessor. And from the rest of the Game Pass offerings.

The most obvious change to Xbox Live Gold is the name: it is being renamed to Xbox Game Pass Core, which makes sense to me, as it positions the offering more obviously next to its subscription sibl...