That is the claim of journalist Jeff Grubb, who has often released correct information about games and companies in the past few years before it was officially announced. He also previously reported that Microsoft is in talks about dropping the Xbox Live Gold subscription.
“I want to reaffirm that Xbox Live Gold is still on a drawing board somewhere with a message that it’s going to disappear,” he said in a statement. GrubbSnax-show op Giant Bomb. “Whether they’re actively talking about it at the moment or not I don’t know, but it’s still on the roadmap to announce that Xbox Live Gold will be discontinued at some point in the future.”
According to Grubb, however, Microsoft is still waiting because the company first wants to have a large number of Game Pass subscribers to absorb the loss of the proceeds from the discontinuation of Gold. “It might take years because the focus right now is getting Game Pass in a very healthy position.”
It’s not clear exactly how healthy Game Pass must be before Xbox Live Gold can disappear, but Grubb is guessing it should have around 40 to 50 million subscribers. On the current subscriber count: “I’ve heard both 19 million and 23 million numbers come up before E3, but they’re approaching at least 23 million now. And as we get closer to Halo (Infinite) release, they may easily reach 23-25 million. When they hit the 30 million, they’re probably going to reevaluate what they’re going to do with Xbox Live Gold.”
An Xbox Live Gold subscription is still required to play online on Xbox consoles, as well as subscriptions to use online multiplayer on PlayStation consoles and Nintendo Switch. So it would also be a competitive move by Microsoft to drop the requirement. However, the company itself has not yet given any indication that it intends to do so.
– –
