New PS Plus Free Game Makes Xbox Live Gold Look Really Bad

One of March's free PlayStation Plus games makes Xbox Live Gold and its Games With Gold offering look very, very bad. Like most months, March's free PS Plus games feature a pretty compelling lineup consisting of Battlefield 2042, Code Vein, and Minecraft Dungeons. These are all fairly new and fairly notable games, and the Battlefield 2042 free download is extended to both PS4 and PS5 players. Xbox Live Gold also has three free games for the month of March, one more than normal. These three games are Trüberbrook, Sudden Strike 4 – Complete Collection, and Lamentum. None of these three games are particularly notable, and they look extra unnoteworthy compared to the PS Plus lineup for the same month. As alluded to, this is the case almost every month, so why do things look extra bad for Xbox this month? Well, because of Minecraft Dungeons.

Minecraft Dungeons is a game directly from Xbox Game Studios and its developer Mojang. It's never been made free via Xbox Live Gold, but now it's free via PlayStation Plus. So, not only are PS Plus subscribers routinely getting substantially better free games than Xbox Live Gold subscribers, but they are getting a game from Xbox before Xbox Live Gold subscribers. 

This is very similar to how Xbox Game Pass subscribers get MLB The Show every year while PlayStation users have to buy each year's new game if they want to play at launch. That said, this situation is a little different as the base tier of PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass are two very different subscription services. The Xbox equivalent of the base tier of PS Plus is Xbox Live Gold. 

At this point, it's clear Xbox doesn't care about Games With Gold. In fact, everything suggests it's slowly sunsetting the offer in favor of focusing on Xbox Game Pass. As this happens, PS Plus continues to offer compelling free games almost every month. It's a bad look for Xbox, but clearly, a bad look it does not care about at this point as Games With Gold has been a borderline punchline for a couple of years now with no change or improvement, no matter how frustrated Xbox Live Gold subscribers get.