Microsoft on Monday announced that it’s replacing Xbox Live Gold with a new Game Pass plan. Starting Sept. 14, Xbox Live Gold will become Xbox Game Pass Core.
The new service will cost $10 a month or $60 a year, the same price as Xbox Live Gold. Game Pass Core will include member discounts and access to online multiplayer gaming, but unlike Xbox Live Gold, there won’t be free monthly games. Instead, Xbox Game Pass Core will come with a library of 25 games, with new titles added two to three times a year.
Microsoft has already announced 19 titles for the service, including Halo 5: Guardians, Psychonauts 2 and Forza Horizon 4, with more to come at a later date.
Game Pass is a subscription service that lets Xbox owners play a library of games for a single flat fee, billed monthly, quarterly, annually or even as part of the Xbox hardware purchase price. Game Pass Core will be the new base tier of the subscription service, joining Console, PC and Ultimate plans.
Game Pass Core replaces Xbox Live Gold.
Current Xbox Gold members will have their subscription automatically moved over to Xbox Game Pass Core on Sept. 14, though Games with Gold comes to an end on Sept. 1. At that point, only Xbox 360 games downloaded from the service will remain for free in the user’s library. Users will need an active subscription to Game Pass Core or Ultimate to continue playing Xbox One games that were downloaded from Gold.
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The new Xbox Game Pass Core offering comes at a time when Microsoft is raising prices on its more robust Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Game Pass Ultimate, which includes a library of hundreds of games on PC and Xbox X console, jumped from $15 a month to $17 a month for new members on July 6. Current users will see the same increase on their bills on Aug. 13.
“We found that the answer to the most compelling catalog was to leverage select titles from our Xbox Game Pass catalog,”Jerret West, the corporate vice president of Microsoft gaming, said in a blog post on Monday. “Our launch collection of more than 25 titles from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and our content partners will offer something for everyone to play on their Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles.”
The confirmed titles at launch are:
- Among Us
- Descenders
- Dishonored 2
- Doom Eternal
- Fable Anniversary
- Fallout 4
- Fallout 76
- Forza Horizon 4
- Gears 5
- Grounded
- Halo 5: Guardians
- Halo Wars 2
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- Human Fall Flat
- Inside
- Ori & The Will of the Wisps
- Psychonauts 2
- State of Decay 2
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited
