Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

‘Banner Saga 2,’ ‘Tron: Evolution’ free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in July

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Indie developer Stoic’s tactical role-playing game The Banner Saga 2 will make its Xbox One debut in July as a free download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, Microsoft announced Tuesday.

The Banner Saga 2 headlines next month’s Games With Gold lineup, joining other promised freebies like Tron: Evolution and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.

Recommended Videos

Funded by a successful Kickstarter project, Stoic’s The Banner Saga premiered in 2014 for PC platforms and mobile devices. Like the original game in the series, The Banner Saga 2 features a branching storyline that changes depending on the choices players make in battle and in conversations with their party members.

Xbox One owners with an active Xbox Live Gold subscription will get an early look at the console version of The Banner Saga 2 when it premieres as a free download via Games With Gold on July 1. The Banner Saga 2 was previously released for Windows and Mac platforms via Steam, and a PlayStation 4 edition will launch on July 5.

Also premiering as a free Games With Gold download next month is Tumblestone, an Xbox One competitive puzzler that Microsoft compares to genre classics like Tetris and Puyo Puyo. Initially slated for release across multiple consoles and PC platforms, Tumblestone will debut as an Xbox One exclusive on July 16, and Gold subscribers can pick up a copy free of charge until August 15.

Xbox 360 titles available as part of next month’s Games With Gold lineup include Ubisoft’s tactical first-person shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Disney’s Tron: Evolution, an action game featuring a storyline that ties into the 2010 film Tron: Legacy.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will be free to download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers between July 1 and July 15, while Tron: Evolution will be up for grabs from July 16-31. Both games are playable on legacy Xbox 360 consoles and on the Xbox One via the platform’s backward compatibility feature.

Danny Cowan
Danny Cowan
Former Contributor
Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…
Topics
Here’s every game you can download on Xbox next week
Palworld's 1.0 launch leads a 24-game lineup that also includes Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced.
Assassin's Creed Black Flag Recynced image

Xbox has shared its rundown of next week's releases, and the list includes 24 new games arriving between July 6 and July 10. The lineup is headlined by two major AAA titles, three notable additions to Game Pass, and a long list of smaller indie games.

Two AAA pre-orders lead the week

Read more
Sony may have been digging the grave of physical PlayStation games for years.
Sony’s Austria disc plant shift suggests physical PlayStation games were already on the way out
The Playstation 5 system standing upright.

Sony recently announced that physical game discs for new PlayStation releases will end in January 2028, and the timing immediately raised questions.

The decision came shortly after Rockstar reportedly generated more than $3 billion in revenue from preorders of GTA 6, including digital editions and code-in-a-box physical copies. That led some critics and fans to wonder whether GTA 6’s massive digital success had pushed Sony into making such a major call.

Read more
Sony is helping bury physical games, and preservation is being left to clean up the mess
A reported 2028 cutoff for PS5 discs gives the industry a deadline it still doesn’t seem ready to handle.
A PS5 sitting on its side with two Dualsense controllers next to it on the right.

Sony’s reported plan to stop producing PS5 discs in 2028 would push PlayStation deeper into a digital-first future, where access depends on licenses, storefront policy, and platform support lasting longer than companies usually promise.

That’s tidy for Sony and ugly for game preservation. Physical media was never a perfect archive, but removing it before a serious replacement exists turns the survival of old games into someone else’s emergency. It also raises questions about long-term ownership, resale rights, and whether players can truly rely on purchases to remain accessible decades later.

Read more