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Subscription services are an important aspect for the game industry today. With surprising speed, Xbox Game Pass continues to grow with such a strength that made Sony want to follow in its footsteps with the upcoming PlayStation Plus.
Among other things, it looks like Xbox Live Gold, the paid subscription required to play paid online multiplayer games on the Xbox console, will soon be permanently merged into Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Gold subscriptions are already part of the highest Game Pass tier, but according to journalist Brad Sams, Microsoft is currently considering discontinuing Xbox Live Gold entirely and offering it exclusively through Game Pass Ultimate. This means that if you want to play paid games online, you must subscribe to Game Pass.
This sort of report has disseminated many times over the past few years that Xbox Live Gold will be permanently discontinued, although Microsoft has previously dismissed officially that the company has no plans for such a change.
It was also recently reported that Microsoft is planning to launch a family plan for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. It should be interesting to see if these rumored changes are merged and introduced together as part of an upcoming restructuring.
In January last year, Microsoft overturned a decision to increase the price of Xbox Live Gold in response to widespread reaction, and also confirmed that the Gold subscription requirement for free-to-play multiplayer games had been removed. |
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