Is Xbox Live Going Free? Industry Insider Comments on New Speculation

Is Xbox Live Gold going free? Earlier this year, the Internet was flooded with rumors and reports [...]

By Tyler Fischer

Is Xbox Live Gold going free? Earlier this year, the Internet was flooded with rumors and reports from a variety of reputable sources claiming that Xbox One's online service was going to be made free. There was even some strange activity from Microsoft itself suggesting that it was preparing to make Xbox Live Gold free. However, in August, Microsoft more or less shot down these rumors, confirming that, at least right now, there are no plans to make Xbox Live free. More recently, many have begun to wonder what triggered all of these claims that the service was going free and why nobody was talking about the topic anymore.

Partially addressing this, Venture Beat reporter and industry insider Jeff Grub seemingly suggested that the announcement was simply delayed when asked "what happened to free Xbox Live?". Unfortunately, this is all Grub reveals, leaving Xbox fans with more questions than answers.

Further, it's not entirely clear if Grub is suggesting if it's still happening or whether it's been put on ice for now. He appears to be suggesting the former, but it's not 100 percent clear.

Of course, if Xbox Live Gold is still going to go free, you'd expect Microsoft to make that announcement before the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S (and maybe Xbox Series V) release this November. It wouldn't make sense to launch new consoles with Xbox Live Gold just to walk all of these subscriptions back a bit later.

That said, the original reports claimed that this announcement would be made before the next-gen systems release, so you'd assume that's still the plan, assuming it was an actual plan in the first place.

xbox one

As always, take everything here with a grain of salt. Not only is nothing here official, but even if the plan is to make Xbox Live Gold free, it doesn't mean this plan will be realized. Plans change all the time, especially in the video game industry.

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