In what feels like an attempt at kicking some bad news under the rug on a Friday, Microsoft announced this morning that the price of Xbox Live Gold is going up.
In what looks like an attempt at kicking some bad news under the rug on a Friday, Microsoft announced this morning that the price of Xbox Live Gold goes up.
How much is Xbox Live Gold monthly?
Here’s how the price changes break down:
The one-month plan goes from $10 per month to $11.
The three-month plan goes from $25 to $30.
The six-month plan goes from $40 to $60 — but only for new customers, says Microsoft.
Can you still buy 12 month Xbox Live Gold?
“But what about the twelve-month plan? Didn’t they used to offer those?”
They did! it had been $60 — or the price that a six-month subscription will choose now. They stopped selling twelve-month plans back in July of last year, presumably because this alteration was on the horizon which they would’ve had to acknowledge on the price tag that 12 months of Live Gold would cost $120.
The good news: the price hike on the six-month plan only impacts new customers. If you’ve already got a six-month subscription (or are grandfathered into an auto-renewing twelve-month subscription), Xbox Support confirmed during a tweet that the price won’t increase:
If you’re an existing online 12-month or 6-month Xbox Live Gold member, there’s no price change. If you decide on to renew your membership, it’ll renew at your current price.https://t.co/wFJmElI5dH
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) January 22, 2021
If you’re on the one-month or three-month plans, though, it looks like you’ll be paying the new price.
Which is better Xbox Live or Xbox Gold?
So why bump the cost? Microsoft doesn’t officially outline their reasoning (beyond remarking that they haven’t increased the price in years, or as long as a decade in some regions), but one can assume it’s a minimum of partially to make the $15 a month Xbox Game Pass (which bundles Xbox Live Gold with a library of all-you-can-eat, on-demand titles) that much more alluring.
