Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription programme has been offering paying PlayStation 3 and PS Vita gamers free games for years now. The annual fee of R489 is less than the cost of a single recently-released game, and gamers are given several new games each month for the cash. Better yet, as long as they keep paying their subscription, they also get a selection of games to download and play that form part of Sony’s Instant Game Collection line-up. On top of that, members get access to free game trials that let them download and play full versions of select games from the PlayStation Store for an hour. As such, PlayStation Plus membership really is a worthwhile purchase.
Microsoft, on the other hand, didn’t offer loyal Xbox Live Gold subscribers anything similar until only recently. When the Xbox One was announced back in May of this year, Microsoft unveiled its Games for Gold programme that would reward holders of Xbox Live Gold memberships with two free games a month, starting in June 2013. The catch was that each game would only be available for download for two weeks, and if Gold members didn’t download them while they were available, then they lost out. In October, Microsoft announced they’d be extending the promotion, which was originally slated to run until December 2013.
With the Xbox One launch date just around the corner, Major Nelson (Microsoft’s Director of Programming for Xbox Live) tweeted yesterday that free games for Xbox Live Gold members would be coming to the Xbox One as well in 2014.
There is no word yet on how the programme will work or how much it will cost, but it seems fair to presume that it will simply continue to be a part of the benefits of having an Xbox Live Gold membership, just extended to games for the Xbox One.
