It seems that the great minds at Sony and Microsoft were indeed thinking alike today because just as Sony revealed the PlayStation Plus games for August, Microsoft did the same thing for Xbox Live Games with Gold. The Games with Gold lineup is arguably more compelling than the PlayStation Plus lineup for August, as Games with Gold has some very familiar names available for free next month.
It's very nearly July, and that means there's a new batch of Xbox Live Games with Gold right around the corner. Microsoft revealed what that next round of free games is today, and though there aren't any particularly big titles in the lineup, there is one game that's sure to please fans of a certain obscene, alcoholic squirrel.
Microsoft is hosting another Free Play Days event on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, making a handful of games free-to-play for the weekend. There are three games up for grabs this time, and they cover a pretty wide range of genres between them. This Free Play Days weekend is headlined by none other than Overwatch, which rolled out a cross-play beta earlier this week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.