What is Xbox Live Gold?

Question: What is Xbox Live Gold?

Answer: Xbox Live Gold is the premium version of the Xbox Live service on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It allows you to do the following:

• Play games against other people online
• Use specialized matchmaking to play against people of similar skill
• Chat with more than one person at a time
• Get access to demos and other content earlier than Xbox Live Free members
• Games With Gold gives you free games on X360 and XONE every month.

For many years, Xbox Live Gold was required to use apps such as Netflix or ESPN (and everything else), but that changed in 2014.  Now you can use all of the apps you want without needing to also have Gold.

Another change on Xbox One is that you only need one Gold subscription per console, and that will allow everyone in the family to play online multiplayer with their own accounts. On Xbox 360, each account has to have its own subscription.

You can subscribe to Xbox Live Gold by either picking up a subscription card at a retail location or you can use your credit card on your Xbox 360 to set up an account. Aso of September 26, 2016, it costs $40 per year.