Your Xbox Live Gold subscription will turn into Xbox Game Pass Core this September

By Tomas Franzese July 17, 2023

Microsoft finally made the decision to move on from its monthly online-access subscription service Xbox Live Gold. On September 14, Xbox Live Gold will transform into Xbox Game Pass Core, with current Gold subscribers automatically gaining a Game Pass Core subscription.

Key art for Xbox Game Pass Core — Microsoft

An Xbox Live subscription tied to online play has existed in some form since Xbox Live launched in 2002, but Xbox Live Gold as we now know it truly came into form in July 2013 when Microsoft started the Games with Gold program that gave subscribers free games each month in addition to that online access. Although Microsoft rolled back some online restrictions in 2021, Games with Gold continues to this day. That will all end when Game Pass Core launches.

According to an Xbox Wire post announcing the service, Xbox Game Pass Core will cost $10 a month or $60 a year and will give players access to online play, exclusive member deals, and a library of “more than 25 titles.” So far, we know the following 19 games are part of the launch lineup for Game Pass Core.

Among Us
Descenders
Dishonored 2
Doom Eternal
Fable Anniversary
Fallout 4
Fallout 76
Forza Horizon 4
Gears 5
Grounded
Halo 5: Guardians
Halo Wars 2
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Human Fall Flat
Inside
Ori & The Will of the Wisps
Psychonauts 2
State of Decay 2
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

Microsoft says it will reveal more Game Pass Core games ahead of the service’s launch and that post-launch Game Pass Core will receive new games two or three times a year. Essentially, subscribers will now have access to a revolving library of Game Pass games instead of four unique Games with Gold titles each month. The Games with Gold program comes to an end on September 1.

All versions of Xbox Game Pass — There will now be four different tiers of Xbox Game Pass to choose from. Microsoft

Those with Xbox Live Gold subscriptions that go through the launch of Game Pass Core will automatically convert to the new service with no change in pricing. When it comes to previously redeemed games, Microsoft says that any Xbox 360 titles will permanently be part of a player’s library, while some form of Game Pass subscription is required to keep playing redeemed Xbox One games.

Xbox Game Pass Core launches on September 14.

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Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

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Turn your Xbox Series X into a Starfield machine with this console wrap

The Starfield Xbox Series X Console Cover.

Microsoft announced that official Xbox Series X Console Wraps will come out later this year. Three of these are already available to preorder, including one based on Bethesda Game Studios' highly anticipated Xbox console exclusive Starfield.
Following in the footsteps of customizable PlayStation 5 console covers, Microsoft is finally giving people more options to customize their normal Xbox Series X series. That comes in the form of Xbox Series X Console Wraps, which Microsoft says are "made with solid panels and an engirdled fabric," and are "designed to perfectly surround your Xbox Series X" without blocking the console's vents and airflow like some of the other current third-party options. The first Xbox Series X Console Wrap to release is based on Starfield and will come out on October 18.

Its design lines up with the special Starfield headset and controller and is based on the avionics modules players will encounter during the game. The Starfield Console Wrap will cost $50 when it launches in October, but two more Consoles Wraps launching a month later will come in slightly cheaper at $45.
Those two Console Wraps use soft microfiber fabric and feature designs based on camouflage, with the Mineral Camo Console Wrap using blues and purples and the Artic Camo Console Wrap featuring gray and white tones. Both Camo Console Wraps release on November 10, the three-year anniversary of the Xbox Series X launch.

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The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.

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Starfield’s file size is massive no matter what platform you’re playing on

A spacecraft in Starfield.

The file sizes for Starfield finally appeared across some of the storefronts it's available on now that it's available to preload. As a result, we've learned just how massive the game is.
On Steam, Bethesda recommends that players have 125 GB of space for the game, but Microsoft's own launcher shows an even bigger PC install size of 139.84 GB for Starfield. That size is only slightly smaller on the console, with the Xbox Store showing me that the game will take up 117.07 GB on my Xbox Series X. It's now very understandable why Microsoft is launching a 1 TB version of the Xbox Series S around Starfield; still, the game will even take over a tenth of that system's memory if players aren't expanding it at all.
This 110+ GB file size across all platforms for Starfield demonstrates just how big Bethesda's upcoming sci-fi RPG will be. It also follows a recent trend of even single-player taking up gigantic chunks of your game system's memory. This year alone, we've seen Star Wars Jedi: Survivor take up over 130 GB of space on consoles, while Baldur's Gate 3 clocks in at 125.14 GB currently. As games get bigger with more detail, it's clear that our gaming platforms will be able to accommodate fewer and fewer games on their SSDs going forward.
At least you can play the game via Xbox Cloud Gaming if none of your platforms can accommodate that file size. Starfield will be released for PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 6. Those who pre-order the Premium Edition will get access on September 1, though.