Microsoft introducing free Xbox Live Gold weekends

Are you an Xbox user that doesn't appreciate all the features that the Xbox Life platform has to offer? Well Microsoft is hoping to change that, by offering you a free weekend of Live Gold access and it's doing it around the world – though the rollout will be staggered in some countries.

This weekend, beginning 4th October and running until 6th October, everyone in the following territories will be able to access Gold features without paying a penny: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam.

Watch all the Youtube and Netflix you could ever watch elsewhere, like on your PC or phone. 

If you're from South or Central America, you'll need to wait a little longer, as your free weekend begins on the 11th and runs through to the 14th. Affected countries are: Agentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia and Mexico. Japan gets the real short end of the stick in this instance though, not having access to its free Gold features until 7th-10th of November.

All of this is likely to be a bit of a marketing gimmick, not only for Xbox Live Gold, but for the online functions of games like Grand Theft Auto V, which launched its online mode just yesterday, and for the Xbox One, which will be hitting the shelves with a boat load of online only features in the latter half of November.

Kitguru Says: A nice gesture by Microsoft, but surely at this point, people that want to pay for Gold do so and those that don't, don't? If you guys pay for Gold, what do you use it for?

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