Goodbye Xbox Live Gold, hello Xbox Game Pass Core

Microsoft is leaving its legacy Xbox subscription service behind as it’s looking to boost the numbers of its new one

The Xbox Live Gold subscription service was created during a totally different era for a totally different market, but retiring it in favor of a new version of Xbox Game Pass is not necessarily beneficial for consumers. (Image: Javier Martinez, Unsplash)

It’s no secret that all major players in the digital entertainment space aim to grow their subscribers’ numbers and obviously earn as much as they possibly can from each individual subscriber — so it makes sense, for Microsoft at least, to stop offering a legacy service like Xbox Live Gold in order to boost its Xbox Game Pass service numbers. So that’s exactly what the company announced today: Xbox Live Gold is going away on September 14th and there will be a new, entry-level tier of Xbox Game Pass taking its place named Core.

This change has been a long time coming: Microsoft had stopped offering Xbox Games with Gold yearly subscriptions back in 2020 and also stopped offering Xbox 360 games as part of it in 2022, so it can now move on to Xbox Games Pass Core focusing on Xbox One or Xbox Series S|X games… and a different set of benefits.

The Xbox Game Pass Core tier seems somewhat expensive for what it offers to consumers compared to the “regular” Xbox Game Pass Console tier — which is anything but coincidental, obviously. (Image: Microsoft)

Subscribers of Xbox Live Gold keen on switching to Xbox Game Pass Core on September 14th won’t be paying more (it’s…