• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox is still planning to drop Live Gold, it’s claimed

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

That’s according to journalist Jeff Grubb, who had made the same claim last year when Xbox Live Gold was still required for free-to-play games.

Yesterday, during his premium GrubbSnax show on Giant Bomb, Grubb addressed the story again and stated his belief that the plans to drop Gold were still on the table at Xbox.

“In the past, I’ve said Xbox Live Gold is going to go away, and when I started saying that it was when Xbox Live Gold was still required for free-to-play games,” he explained.

“And I knew for a fact that they were going to make a change before Halo Infinite, and I thought at least it would be dropped for free-to-play games because they weren’t going to charge people to play Halo on Xbox when they weren’t charging you to play it on PC or whatever.

“Then they decided to raise the price and it looked weird, right? Why would they do that if they were going to get rid of Xbox Live Gold?

“I just wanted to reiterate, Xbox Live Gold is still on a board somewhere saying ‘this is going to go away at some point’. Whether or not they’re actively talking about it right now, I don’t know, but they still have it on a roadmap saying ‘Xbox Live Gold will be dropped at some point in the future’.”

Grubb says that the reason Xbox Live Gold hasn’t been discontinued yet because Xbox is still waiting to hit a target number of Game Pass subscribers first.

“[Dropping Gold] might take years, because the focus right now still very much is getting Game Pass into a very healthy position.

“It’s okay right now, but […] before E3 things were starting to kind of slow down and I think there were maybe some people at Microsoft getting a little bit antsy about it because they’re like, ‘we do need this thing to grow’, the problem is they were waiting for big games to come to the service.

“It seems that E3 really helped Game Pass hit its stride where people can now look into the future and say: ‘If I get it now I’m going to have all these games, but then there’s going to be this and this and this right in the immediate future, and then these big things on the horizon.’

“So Microsoft’s just kind of [keeping their] heads down on getting user acquisition, and that means ‘Xbox Live will go away but we need to get to a certain threshold with Game Pass before we can make that choice and unplug that revenue source because we have enough coming from something else’.”

As to what that threshold may be, Grubb suggests that it’s likely to be in the region of 40-50 million Game Pass subcribers, something he says they’re “not close to” yet.

“I heard [it was] between 19 million and 23 million before E3, but they’re at least approaching 23 million,” he said, “and as we get close to Halo I bet they easily hit 23-25 million by the end of this year, and once they’re at 30 million they’ll probably reassess what they’re doing with Xbox Live Gold.

“[It] probably still won’t go away until it’s probably closer to something like 40-50 million active users for Game Pass, but all that stuff seems within their grasp right now as long as they keep up the marketing side and promotional side along with all these games that are getting announced.

“We’ll see how it goes with Halo. If Halo is a big lightning rod for adoption for Game Pass then they’ll know: ‘Oh, and when Starfield comes that’s going to be our next major lightning rod, and everything in between is going to be sort of connective tissue.’

“And as we get these big games coming out on a faster cadence – and by 2023 they should be hitting a pretty fast cadence in terms of releasing games – Game Pass should at that point really hit its stride and they should be well on their way to getting rid of Xbox Live Gold.

“But the point is, for now, Xbox Live Gold is still sticking around, but it’s still on the roadmap to go away for good.”
 

ManaByte

Member
That’s according to journalist Jeff Grubb
over it whatever GIF
 

Plantoid

Member
I used to be a PC gamer, and the only thing that made get a console was gamepass (and GPU prices)

Live gold needs to go, it's archaic, I'm sure after forza and halo gp numbers will be in the 30m range
 

elliot5

Member
The "still" claim doesn't even hold any water - Last time this was claimed the exact opposite happened and they tried to double the price of it.
It still makes sense ... it's always been claimed Gold is going to be dropped once game pass reaches a critical mass of subs and that's what Grubb is still saying (40-50M subs?). There isn't really a good way of getting the die hard Gold only subs to migrate onto Game Pass (Ultimate..) without basically pricing them out and making GPU a better value proposition in comparison. If they drop Gold completely now they don't capture those users into a new sub service and lose a bunch of revenue. They figured if they made Gold alone essentially $10 a month, and Game Pass $10 a month, those Gold only subs would be like wait why don't I just get Ultimate for $5 more ($15)? Obviously it backfired.

I'm definitely in the camp that Gold gets dropped, but prob not until 2023 or 24.
 
Last edited:

Mr Rawnch

Neo Member
It would be interesting to see how they leverage it against Gamepass without disrupting their price structure. It would really depend on how MS builds on the Gamepass library over time and the perks offered.
 

FranXico

Member
They won't drop it until people prefer GP over it.
I could see them making Gold only available as GamePass Ultimate though, that would do the trick for them.
 
Last edited:

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
If people are still willing to throw down $60-70 for brand new games a few times a year, MS isn't going to stop them. and is unlikely to let them just not spend the $5-10 a month for XBLG either.

This whole "force everyone on GamePass" idea is dumb.
 
Last edited:

elliot5

Member
If people are still willing to throw down $60-70 for brand new games a few times a year, MS isn't going to stop them. and is unlikely to let them just not spend the $5-10 a month for XBLG either.

This whole "force everyone on GamePass" idea is dumb.
less dumb than forcing everyone to sub to Gold to play non-F2P games online. I'd rather all games be playable online for free, like PC, and having more people on Game Pass
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Grubb strikes again with the made up narrative lol

Well last time MS increased the price and after the backslash they reverted it.

Maybe now the increase in price will happen and not reverted.
Did they really revert it? Did they return the yearly sub?
 

Mr Rawnch

Neo Member
XBL Gold will go away. If you want to play online, sub to GamePass.
Makes sense.

Gamepass is a great way to showcase games within their retail store. Personally, I've found the store models for MS, Sony, and Nintendo to be cumbersome somewhat. Steam is the only virtual store I can tolerate to navigate.

Nintendo's store is flooded with shovelware.
Microsoft mixes movies and apps with their games.
Some of Sony's games don't come up unless you are specific in your search.

The console companies will need to figure out how to sell digital content efficiently.
 
Lol even if Jeff got this from a reliable source it's not happening. GamePass most likely makes no money so why would they get rid of Live which does make money? MS just overpaid for Bethesda just so that it could lose value by not releasing games on the biggest platform for their games.
 

elliot5

Member
Lol even if Jeff got this from a reliable source it's not happening. GamePass most likely makes no money so why would they get rid of Live which does make money? MS just overpaid for Bethesda just so that it could lose value by not releasing games on the biggest platform for their games.
if the target sub goal to drop Gold is 40-50M game pass subs that's a cool 400-750M revenue per month (all $10 subs to all $15 subs, obv would not be all GPU subs though). Idk how game pass wouldn't be profitable at that point.
 

elliot5

Member
Just before/right after, does it really matter. I see the Deathloop demo at the Sony show last night made him interested in Deathloop finally. I for one can think of 7.5 billion reasons why he now likes Deathloop.

P.S. Apologies for mocking your hero Jeffrey Grubb Esq.
not my hero, just annoying seeing dumb ass takes attacking Grubb, DF, etc, or some conspiracy that something Sony happens and therefore the Xbox related "news" is shared as some counter measure. It's tiring.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
I mean it's obvious it should go away. But if Grubb is actually right, we will see. He is just throwing his theories around.

Cause afterall he is just one of them "insiders".
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Drop Gold and have GamePass Ultimate only. I can see that, yeah... Otherwise Grubb is attention seeker with bad track record.
Didn't they try to increase it to $120 per year?
For 2 days, yeah they did. It was such a strange move anyway, the way it's was handled...
 
if the target sub goal to drop Gold is 40-50M game pass subs that's a cool 400-750M revenue per month (all $10 subs to all $15 subs, obv would not be all GPU subs though). Idk how game pass wouldn't be profitable at that point.
We need to see their Financials when a company doesn't release them that's a bad sign. How much do they spend on games introduced and developed to GamePass.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
The "still" claim doesn't even hold any water - Last time this was claimed the exact opposite happened and they tried to double the price of it.

Even if Jeff Grubb is right by the year 2025, he'll claim he was right all along. When in reality, he's been wrong about this the whole time.
 

elliot5

Member
We need to see their Financials when a company doesn't release them that's a bad sign. How much do they spend on games introduced and developed to GamePass.
Even if MLB cost 100M to put on game pass (doubtful) there's still hundreds of millions left. Do you think Bug Fables and Prodeus and such cost tens of millions?
 
Last edited:

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
You must of missed the upgrade to GPU or pay $120 for XBLG fiasco?
I didn't miss anything..

I love this "people who were blatantly wrong still think they were right" opposite day stuff though lol

The entire narrative behind "MS will drop XBLG" was that they would make playing online free.. now everyone has just switched to this "well Gamepass will be the only way to play online eventually" thing and it's hilarious.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom