Microsoft Making Changes to Xbox Live

Microsoft have announced some major changes coming to Xbox Live, both in the way it works and in the things you’ll get for subscribing. Some of these changes have been a long time coming, while others will affect only a small subset of the Xbox Live community. Even so, they’re welcome changes and have a lot of potential.

First up, Microsoft are ditching Microsoft Points. Everything on the Xbox One will cost real, actual money, and not the strange Disney money that they’ve created for themselves. The conference wasn’t very specific on whether this was happening on the Xbox 360 as well, or if that system is too strongly built into the network code, but we’ll update when we have more information to share. Fingers crossed, if only for the sake of people who are only going to be picking up their first Xbox 360 in the next few months and years.

Xbox One will also have the capacity to store “all of your friends.” That’s an exact quote from the conference, although how true it will be has yet to be seen. The Xbox 360 has a 100 friend limit, and rumours in recent weeks placed the friend limit on the Xbox One at 1000 people, although the implication from the conference is that there is no limit, not that it’ll just be really, really hard to reach. No doubt some social devil will find out more after the consoles official launch in November.

Those of you that hate Xbox Live Gold will be happy to learn that they’re becoming more open with the subscription service. They’re not dropping Xbox Live entirely, of course, but they are going to try and give you more value for money, as well as make it easier for friends and family sharing either a single console or a series of consoles. Xbox Live Gold Sharing will allow multiple accounts to play online, as well as several other features, without the need to pay for multiple subscriptions. For couples, this will mean a saving of over $60 a year, and even more for families. That is, of course, unless the price goes up, although that’s yet to be seen.

Finally, in a move to counter PlayStation Plus, Microsoft have announced they’ll be bringing free games to the service. Unlike PlayStation Plus, these games aren’t likely to get anybody buying a year long subscription. The only announced titles so far are Assassin’s Creed 2 and Halo 3, both games that have been dirt cheap for many, many years. Although both decent games, almost everybody has already played them.