Free to Play games will be free to play on Xbox

Welp, the gamers have spoken and MS responded.

[UPDATED on 1/22/2021 at 8:52 PM PT]

We messed up today and you were right to let us know. Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day. As a result, we have decided not to change Xbox Live Gold pricing.

We’re turning this moment into an opportunity to bring Xbox Live more in line with how we see the player at the center of their experience. Free-to-play games will truly be free and you will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold membership to play those games on Xbox. We are working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible in the coming months.

If you are an Xbox Live Gold member already, you stay at your current price for renewal. New and existing members can continue to enjoy Xbox Live Gold for the same prices they pay today. In the US, $9.99 for 1-month, $24.99 for 3-months, $39.99 for 6-months and $59.99 for retail 12-months. Link

I wonder what the Sony fannies would bitch about now. 😎

This is still not good enough. Trash gold all together and make all games free to play online. This model is still dumb. It penalizes folks who pay for their games.

I am just excited to pay $120 to play online. I feel more immersed into their online infrastructure the more expensive it gets.

Just buy the service twice then. 😂

All what's missing is $70 games. FULL 3D SURROUND IMMERSION

Knew it. Hence I didn't bother commenting on it, because I knew they were going to do a prompt about-face.

Lesson of the day: internet outrage works.

Well, folks can't say MS is not responsive.

Oh wow. That is definitely good of them to have listened and reacted so quickly to the feedback. Kudos to them for doing that.

Personally I don’t think the free-to-play games being behind a Gold subscription was all that much of a big deal one way or the other. It’s definitely great that they not going to raise the subscription costs though because while I would have still paid for it myself I would obviously prefer to pay less. Also this means that Nintendo and Sony are unlikely to raise their prices anytime soon either and I most definitely don’t want to pay more when I get all three of the services. I already subscribe to both Microsoft and Nintendo and will probably subscribe to Sony when I get a PS5.

Sure, but only when enough people shout loud enough in unison, and only when people starts making memes about it. Saw one poking fun at what else you can buy with $120 on the PCMR subreddit today, and that's when I knew for certain Microsoft would reverse course. Corporations are very sensitive about being memed.

Internet outrage works, but it's a very inefficient consumer relations mechanism.

Good, that wasn't good for anyone.

THats it im going offline now

I wouldn't say it is inefficient. Companies reacting to customers is how things should work. I don't see a more effective avenue.

Microsoft PR team backpedalling is nothing new now but this one is a good gesture.

At least they didn't backpedal on their belief in generations. 😎

How can MS do good and **** up at the same time, good they aren't changing the pricing for Gold, but removing the need for Gold to play F2P games is a bad move imo.

So as someone who pays for their games, and then slugged a fee to play online, well i'm ok with that as i feel the fee is to help pay for MS to keep the vast majority of cheaters off console and keep them on PC where they belong.

But i'm not ok if they're going to give people who pay nothing for the game, free MP as well, that's fucked up and following Sony's lead is anti consumer, and dumb.

Either everyone pays or no one pays, you can't divide your consumers that way, its BS.

When you’re in 3rd and not making up ground, these are the moves that have to be made. But the price hike was because someone looking and the financials got concerned and made a move. Money needs to start coming from somewhere. And we have yet to see Xbox get a return on any of these investments of the last few years. How much longer are they willing to wait???

@hardwenzen: Shit your sig is out of date already 🤣🤣🤣

They literally can afford to wait as long as they like. Not sure why it is a concern to you or any gamer.

What did i miss?

Read ALL of pedro's OP 🤣🤣🤣

So the shitshow was so massive they flip flopped? HOLY SHIT LMAO 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for letting me know, Mr Forza.

@Pedro: As a fan of Xbox and their games, I want the brand and its image to improve and grow. The Xbox brand hasn’t been in as bad of a position as it is right now. And the management seems to be in panic mode right now. They’re trying anything and everything they can to get the popularity needle to move. It’s not working. The Xbox One finished 4th in NPDs behind the PS4, Switch and a retro mini console on more than one occasion. They’ve had the power advantage since 2017 and it hasn’t mattered. We keep hearing about all these studio acquisitions, yet we’re getting fewer games now than we ever have. Where’s Forza? Halo Infinite? Thank goodness for Gears Tactics and Gears DLC... Then look at the Series X/S launch. The “tools” weren’t ready. The most powerful console launched losing 3rd party face offs to an inferior product. Then they can’t get any sort of substantial amount of stock on shelves. And there’s no software in sight. Did they not know they were launching a console?

But gamers shouldn’t be concerned about any of that, right?

It should work like that, but the problem is the myriad of other complaints that go unaddressed because they haven't reached the outrage critical mass. It shouldn't have to come to that.

And the memes. The horrible memes.

You had your blonde moment for today 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Again why should you or any game be concerned about MS return on their investment with the Xbox?

All you did is spew nonsense and expect to be taken seriously. You are here asking about Forza and Halo Infinite as if you don't already know that at least one of them is coming out this year. You then continue the nonsensical charade about no software in sight. 🙄 Come back to me when you want to discuss reality instead fallacy.

It is a simple formula. The masses cause change by action. No action by the masses equates to no change needed.

It seems to me like M$ is trying to integrate live into Game Pass into a single service by trying to push people more towards that and likely phase out regular live service itself at some point. But, I'll still do all my online gaming at no additional charge, on PC.

@eoten: They need to get rid of gold all together. They should stop wasting resources on two "different" services that overlap each other.

Yeah, they need to get rid of the tiered system. Either have it or don't. No "gold" or "deluxe" or anything like that.

The whole thing is dumb to begin with, though; if they can't make money off of console sales and whatever cut of the sales they get from publishers and developers, they need to do their job better. Not take it out on customers.

@mrbojangles25: Exactly. They can find a way to recoup the Gold membership especially when they have added additional cost to the maintain the membership with games with gold.

What a backtracking. Welcome to the F2P club, Xbox fans

The blonde moment is what MS had today. How dumb must you be to even try charging $120? Are they from another dimension 😅

How do you go from raising a price by 60 dollars usually a streaming service or whatever raises it by like what 1-2 dollars or something on like netflix a month. They wanted to raise it by 60 dollars per year in one fell swoop. Its one of the most idiotic moves ive ever seen they were in dead last place behind the ps5 and the switch wtf were they even thinking with this?

It just doesn't make any sense. Then like this games going free shoulda been a thing for them like look were doing this now its just counter to the backlash I don't like this move.

They coulda just been like going free games free to play a big twitter phil say for the gamers now its just trash that was done to counter some backlack. This was a mistake.

No it was a calculated move by MS, one they thought they could get away with, yours was your inability to read the OP, that's a blonde moment, and you're having more than one today.

Something people need to understand before they go pissing and moaning about other people playing on a different console they don't play on personally is that without those players on other systems giving competition to the consoles YOU play on, the price for your hardware and your services would go up exponentially. If it wasn't for Xbox players, Playstation could raise online subscriptions to double that and there would be nothing you could do about it with no competition to run to if they did. And Xbox could just as easily charge $799 for a console and $20/month for online if they weren't in competition with Playstation.

So, those who constantly troll consumers of other brands should be thankful, because without those "lems" or "cows" as you derogatorily call each other, gaming on your own systems would be a lot worse.

Playstation did not even have a subscription service until Xbox came along...PS3 and PS2 both had 100% free online.

If anything competition made sony more greedy seeing microsoft do what it did. They were like oh shiz we can do that o ok lets make some more cash.

This was all microsoft fault sometime competition isn't actually all its cracked up imagine if we still had free online on ps4 and ps5 and maybe PS4 woulda been epic beast.

Like the ps3 was an epic beast it had the cell, blu-ray even though it was 600 dollars I dunno ps4 was weak compared to PC's especially mine the ps3 really wasn't that weak when it came out it just lacked good games like the PS2 had and came out like way late after the 360 built up a good library.

Yea I dunno where'd we be at if sony kept rolling epic system's like the ps1 and the ps2 and yeah i dunno it seems like competition got involved we've gotten worst consoles to me personally i've been gaming exclusivesly on PC and switch lite now a days so yea.

Give me another PS1 with like FFT FF7 and star ocean exclusives everywhere epic games i can't get PC im baCk in give me garbage like the xbox one im out.

Nice damage controlling for MS 🤣You're blind as f*ck to what's happening and you're the one talking about blonde moments? L😂L

You thinking MS had a blonde moment shows that you're having another blonde moment, without me having to explain to you to read the WHOLE OP, you would still be clueless, but yeah MS are having the blonde moment 🤣🤣🤣

Well that was fast. When you try to pull a fast one and gamers retaliate....

Raising the prices during a pandemic what were ya thinking Microsoft? That kinda tells ya what happens, they want all the Gold subs to sub to Game pass Ultimate.

Man, you bitch about cows bringing up MS in non related threads and what do you go do...

Good for the gamers telling MS what BS it was. I could do without the lovie dovie BS speak though.

Are you a blonde Aussie? Let me guess what happened. Today, someone asked you if you had a blonde moment, it triggered you, you were offended, and decided to spam it on the forums because its a new "insult" you've learned from personal experience? 😅Let me guess, i am only 100% spot on and after all the messages i've seen you post, not only is it not surprising, but why the hell didn't i think of that sooner 🤣

A blonde dude that plays nothing else but racing games LOL. Now that's something. Fund you online 😎

FINALLY! All it took was getting roasted alive for this to happen. You really have to put MS in a corner to get them to act. And to think lems defended this shit for years.

Fantastic news but this will always be another bullet for the Sony fannies as another failed attempt at terrible moves (like their supposed XB1 DRM).

Online is the public square now.

Raging online CAN work.

Many things are moving online.

Yeah we're done here as you've wrecked yourself, feel free to respond as i won't be :)

I do wonder if MS is about to remove the open secret $ 1/15 gamepass trick.

Okay blondy 😂

Now that Xbox has removed the paywall for free to play games, I can say I’m against it without cow accusations that I’m defending ms.

It means games are more likely to go down the free to play/micro transaction route, and it will inevitably mean that less innovative games will be developed.

Ms screwed up with the price increase - poor timing - but reversing the policy of online games needing an online subscription is wrong.

On the other hand, Sony will now be under pressure to stop charging for cloud saves, and they won’t be able to raise psplus prices either, so both camps win.

I want the people that said it was a good deal, to still send that extra 60 bucks to microsoft. Man the backpeddling from Pedro and IP daily are doing is hilarious.

@mrbojangles25 bro microsoft is ready for your 120 you said it was a great deal myswell just keep paying even tho they backtracked on it.

Now Sony made cloud saving free!!

Sorry my bad, you still have to pay for it.

What the **** are you talking about? MS's GaaS games are still going to need Gold to play, but F2P games should be F2P. It's a business model in of itself that has existed for years. Every... single... platform but Xbox hasn't required a paywall for these games. Xbox was ripping people off for years requiring one until right this moment.