Xbox LIVE

In the afternoon of May 6, 2021, Microsoft had a few issues in play with Xbox games. They showed a "major outage" occurring in their "store & subscriptions" section of Xbox Status readouts, as well as "limited" issues with games & gaming as well as Cloud Gaming. Launching games will be limited until this is fixed, and you won't likely be able to purchase new games until Microsoft figures out what their deal is.

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We're quickly closing in on May, and that means a new batch of Xbox Live Games with Gold are on the way. Today, Microsoft revealed the games it will offer for free next month to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. As always, there will be two games from the Xbox One era and two games from previous generations that are playable through backward compatibility.

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Microsoft has been charging for multiplayer through Xbox Live Gold since the days of the Xbox 360, but today it's making a major change to the way that works. Earlier in the year, in response to pushback over a planned Xbox Live Gold price hike, Microsoft announced that not only would Xbox Live Gold subscriptions stay at the same cost, but also that it would start allowing online multiplayer in free-to-play games without an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Today, Microsoft did as it promised, enabling free online multiplayer in a ton of free-to-play games.

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April is nearly upon us, which means today Microsoft revealed a new batch of Xbox Live Games with Gold titles. While April doesn't seem like it's going to be some kind of bang-up month for the service, there will still be some interesting games up for grabs. At the very least, we can expect a pretty wide collection of genres on offer in April.

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If you've always thought it was strange that you still need an Xbox Live Gold membership to play free-to-play multiplayer games on Xbox consoles, then we've got some good news for you: it looks like that requirement will soon be gone. As promised earlier in the year, Microsoft has started testing functionality that will allow Xbox users play multiplayer in free-to-play games without requiring an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

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The times they are a-changin, and as Microsoft dives into the next generation with two new consoles, a subscription service, and even cloud streaming in tow, it seems the company has decided that the brands of old could use with a bit of refreshing. Microsoft has announced that it is rebranding Xbox Live, though that branding won't be going away entirely after this move. In fact, Microsoft seems to be rebranding Xbox Live as an effort to distinguish Xbox's online systems from the Xbox Live membership.

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Microsoft already has at least two communications platforms so what's the harm in having one more. For a time, Skype seemed to be its one chatting and calling solution until Slack and later Zoom forced it to grow Microsoft Teams. Now it might be taking on yet another communication, this time with a bent towards gaming, as Redmond gets deep into talks about buying Discord for a lot more than its recently valued worth.

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Even consoles can no longer escape the Internet, even if you play games offline. In addition to actual online gameplay, console platforms require you to go online and sign in to your account for some activities and features, especially when buying digital copies of games. That, of course, means that when those remote servers go down, gamers suddenly find themselves locked out of certain experiences, just like what happened with Xbox Live for more than a few hours.

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This afternoon Xbox services had a few outages and/or issues. This included what Microsoft marked as a "Major Outage" for items like "Account & Profile", "Store & Subscriptions", Multiplayer gaming, and Cloud gaming. Together those basically make up the biggest bits of the online space for Xbox players of multiplayer games - chances are you felt the impact of this set of issues.

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With the first day of March getting ever closer, Microsoft has revealed the Xbox Live Games with Gold lineup for next month. If there's a theme to this month, it definitely seems to be shooters - be they tactical, top-down, or run-and-gun games. If you're a fan of shooters of any variety, you'll probably want to reserve at least a little bandwidth to download these games next month.

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Following heavy criticism of the change, the Xbox team has announced that it will not be increasing the price for its Xbox Live Gold subscription service. 'We messed up today and you were right to let us know,' the company said in its update on the matter. Instead, the company says you'll no longer need Xbox Live Gold to play free-to-play games on Xbox consoles.

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It seems that Microsoft is doing some light cleaning in preparation for the launch of its Xbox Series X console. It has retired the Xbox One X as well as the digital edition of the Xbox One S but it isn't just the physical products that are being retired. Apparently, even the 12-month subscription tier of Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold has been quietly eased out of the scenes, feeding rumors that Xbox Live itself might be the next one to go.

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