Goodbye, Xbox Live Gold — Hello, Game Pass Core

Xbox announced yesterday that it is phasing out Xbox Live Gold, its long-running subscription service for online multiplayer, later this year. It’s incorporating it into Game Pass as a new tier called Core, which offers similar benefits to Live Gold, with some slight changes. The new model goes into effect on September 14, at which point all Xbox Live Gold members will become Xbox Game Pass Core members if they haven’t already made the switch. Here’s everything Gold users need to know.

The company had already begun phasing the service out and intertwining it with Game Pass already — Gold and its benefits were already part of the Game Pass Ultimate. It also retired the name “Xbox Live” in 2021 in favor of “Xbox network.” This is a final shift towards making Game Pass the sole subscription service from Xbox.