12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription has quietly gone extinct

The option to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold on a yearly basis has been removed, on purpose, in much the same way that the Xbox One X was culled from Microsoft’s offerings: quietly.

So, you used to have three Xbox Live Gold subscription options to choose from (one, three, and 12-month), but Microsoft has removed the 12-month subscription - the least popular of the bunch.

Xbox Live Gold lets Xbox console players play online with their friends and offers other special deals and benefits, like a couple of free games every month and other discounts. It should be mentioned that our PC brethren do not need Gold membership to play online, because … reasons.

It’s probably still possible to buy the 12-month subscription from third-party retailers, but those will also disappear once their code stock runs out.

Microsoft hasn’t said why it’s removed the 12-month subscription, so it’s obviously time for some wild speculation.

Maybe Gold is just getting absorbed by the Xbox Game Pass and removing the 12-month subscription means it will take less time to move everyone over.

My quiet hope is that Gold is being removed so that console players will get to play with their friends for free, like the PC players do, but that seems unlikely.

The monthly subscription to Gold is currently R99 per month, while the quarterly subscription is R249 every three months.

Originally published by NAG.