Xbox One will require an Xbox Gold subscription for almost everything

Microsoft has always been a fan of charging their Xbox customers a premium to access features including multiplayer gaming, entertainment applications, and Internet Explorer. The company has announced the list of additional new features for Xbox One that will require a Live Gold subscription.

Xbox One will require a paid subscription to access the console’s OneGuide (TV Guide), Game DVR service, Skype, and new SmartMatch service. We aren’t extremely surprised about the news, but now we can confirm what we suspected.

This announcement doesn’t exactly boast well with customers who are debating between Microsoft and Sony’s latest consoles. The PlayStation 4 will require a PlayStation Plus subscription to play games online, but it won’t require one for many other features including the Game DVR.

In the end - most users will have a subscription to Xbox Live Gold anyway, but for most this idea will be a battle of principle between the two companies.

What are your thoughts on Microsoft charging for essentially… everything?

Source: Microsoft via The Verge

Michael Archambault