Gears 5 in February helped Games with Gold kick off 2021. It may be that there is no way to have both a streaming/subscription service, and a free-games subscription, at parity. After all, Sony’s problem is the inverse: PlayStation Now is the second banana, with many folks satisfied by what they receive through PlayStation Plus. Neither has Microsoft, by the looks of 2021’s Games with Gold roster.
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How, then, do they bring quality to Games with Gold while still incentivizing the $4.99 upgrade to Game Pass, without simply mimicking or cannibalizing its catalog? The best and most current games, especially from the company’s sizable first-party operation, should be found on Xbox Game Pass. So Microsoft finds itself in somewhat of a conundrum. But it’s struggled as that has timed out and as major partners like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts created their own subscription services - the latter of which is now paired with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Games with Gold had a very strong run when the Xbox 360 catalog was still fresh (and when backward compatibility was introduced in 2015). Microsoft answered with Games with Gold in 2013, plainly a reaction to PlayStation Plus, which now set the player’s expectation that people should get some kind of kickback for paid multiplayer access. Having already given away multiplayer access, Sony had to offer strong games to spin up that kind of audience.
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But Sony’s catalog shows higher highs (10 80-rated games, to six for Games with Gold) and greater product diversity than Microsoft, which leaned into dated fighting games, city-building sandboxes, and Konami and Capcom’s rummage sales.Īgain, the disparity between Games with Gold and PlayStation Plus can be explained by the origins of both services: PlayStation Plus started in 2010 as an attempt to convince PS3 owners to sign up for a subscription service. The average Metacritic score of Games with Gold’s 49 titles in 2021 is 0.8 points lower than PlayStation Plus’ games (73.8 to 73).
In other words, exactly what one would expect after 2020. Most of its bigger names were Xbox 360 (or even Xbox) compatible titles, and the tone and quality of its smaller Xbox One offerings was too uneven to suggest Microsoft views that as an indie showcase. Players, subscribers, and games press like myself still may have rolled their eyes and wondered how long Microsoft could continue balancing the free-games obligation of a Gold membership with Xbox Game Pass, clearly the subscription the company would prefer everyone buy.īut Xbox Live Games with Gold soldiered on, status quo. If Xbox Live Games with Gold was facing an existential crisis at the turn of a new console generation, the service’s catalog didn’t reflect it over the course of 2021.
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