A lot of the chatter around Xbox recently has revolved around Microsoft’s efforts to acquire Activision Blizzard, which now look set to be successful following scrutiny from the American Federal Trade Commission.
One of the many talking points discussed during court proceedings between the two sides, aside from whether Call of Duty would be made available on PlayStation following any merger and which studios Microsoft has considered acquiring over the years, was Xbox Game Pass, which Sony’s Jim Ryan called “value destructive.”
However, this doesn’t seem to have mattered to Xbox, which has just announced that, from September, Xbox Live Gold will be replaced by a service called Xbox Game Pass Core.
What do you think of Xbox Live Gold becoming Xbox Game Pass Core?
As announced via an Xbox Wire post, Game Pass Core will be taking over from Xbox Live Gold as of September 14, with existing Live Gold members automatically being transferred across to the renamed service, which will still be priced at $9.99 a month ($59.99 per year).
“We wanted to use this opportunity to re-imagine how to include content with this subscription," said Jerret West, Xbox’s CVP of gaming marketing, in the wire post, continuing: “We found that the answer to the most compelling catalogue was to leverage select titles from our Xbox Game Pass catalogue.”
As such, at launch, Game Pass Core will feature a collection of 25 Game Pass games for players to grab free of charge, including Forza Horizon 4, Fallout 4, and The Elder Scrolls Online, providing a replacement for Games with Gold, which will come to an end on September 1.
Those who’ve previously grabbed any Xbox 360 titles via Games with Gold will automatically retain these in their console’s library, while Xbox One games can be retained by maintaining a subscription to either Xbox Game Pass Core or Game Pass Ultimate.
In addition to its library of games, which will be added to later this year and “2-3 times a year” going forwards, Game Pass Core will give members the ability to play online, as Live Gold currently does.
Regardless of what you think of this change to from Xbox, make sure to check out the rest of our coverage of games available on the Series X/S and One, as well as our array of guides to the latest developments series like Call of Duty, with Season 4 Reloaded having recently kicked off in both Warzone and Modern Warfare 2.
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