Xbox Games With Gold lived in the shadow of Game Pass in 2022

You may have noticed that Polygon didn’t do an analysis of what Xbox Live’s Games With Gold program offered in 2022, like it did for PlayStation Plus Essential. Honestly, it’s because the expectations for that catalog are now so low, and Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in beating them, that it’s just not worth it.

Bagging these games, most of which were small-scale titles, largely anonymous when they launched or released a decade ago, seems cumulative and even petty, if not also unfair to their developers. Also, it’s not like subscribers are being tricked into paying for something they don’t use. Xbox Live Gold pioneered the idea of ​​paid online multiplayer access 17 years ago, after all, with the launch of Xbox 360. If you’re not interested in paying for online multiplayer, it’s unlikely that Games With Gold will yes just make him change his mind. .

We’ve dedicated a lot of copies to explaining that the real value is in an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which at $14.99 a month is $3 less than the new top tier of PlayStation Plus. Game Pass’s curated library and commitment to day-and-date releases, particularly for Xbox first-party games, makes it a much stronger choice for a renowned library of free-to-play games.

Part of the reason we do these year-end subscription reviews is to congratulate a well-chosen library or chide the platform owner for doing better. Xbox Live Games With Gold, over the last three years, has shown that there aren’t many opportunities for either of them anymore. The end of the availability of Xbox 360 games in Games With Gold, reducing the monthly offers to two titles, does not make us optimistic that this will change either.

All of that said, let the record reflect that Xbox Live Games With Gold subscribers got access to 42 titles in 2022, with a combined suggested retail price of $712.58.