December’s Xbox Games with Gold announced

Ever since Microsoft chose to focus on growing its Xbox Game Pass subscription service, the quality of games being offered as part of the console manufacturer’s Games with Gold program has seen quite a decline. December’s free games have now been announced – further proving that Games with Gold may need to be retired.

Making the announcement on their blog, Dan Hickey, the Marketing Program Manager at Xbox said “Get ready to unwrap your December Games with Gold lineup! On Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, it’s a double helping of 2D side-scrolling fun with Colt Canyon and Bladed Fury.”

As mentioned, the two games on offer are ‘Colt Canyon’ and ‘Bladed Fury’ respectively: two relatively unknown games, with the former being a 2D pixel art shooter “where you control a cowboy, or one of the many other unlockable characters, whose mission is to save his kidnapped partner from the ruthless bandits.”

Bladed Fury meanwhile is said to be a classic 2D action game based on Chinese mythology “featuring a fluid combat experience, a high-octane combo system, and a plethora of ancient enemies and gods to destroy.”

Just because these two titles are not the most popular doesn't mean that they are not worth trying, but there has been a clear and noticeable decline in the quality of the games on offer as part of Games with Gold – if nothing else based on the RRP value of the games alone.

Previously, Microsoft’s Games with Gold offerings would include 4 games in total: 2 Xbox One games; an OG Xbox title; and an Xbox 360 game. Unfortunately, Microsoft has dropped support for these older titles, meaning that you should only expect 2 free games a month. Some fans were hoping that this would result in fewer but higher quality titles – though this does not seem to be the case. Hopefully Games with Gold gets overhauled sooner rather than later.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of December’s Games with Gold? How does it compare to PS+ Essential? What should Microsoft do with Games with Gold? Let us know down below.

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