Four new games are heading into the Games With Gold program for Xbox Live in September.
Microsoft is giving people who subscribe to the Xbox Live Gold program, which costs $60 annually, access to some smaller Xbox One games and some big-name Xbox 360 classics. These games will hit the service throughout the month of September, so you’ll have to keep checking back into the Xbox Store if you want to get ’em all. Gaming is a $99.6 billion business, and consoles represent a significant chunk of that. Microsoft is attempting to keep a hold on a corner of that revenue with its Xbox Live Gold subscription fees by offering up these bonus games as part of that membership. This keeps players engaged in the service and willing to renew their payment in the product to keep access to that library, which they lose when their Gold membership lapses.
For Xbox One, you can get the role-playing throwback Earthlock: Festival of Magic and the side-scrolling platform adventure Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. On Xbox 360, Microsoft is dishing out the excellent driving sim Forza Horza and the Electronic Arts parkour action shooter Mirror’s Edge.
As is true with all Xbox 360 releases in the Games With Gold program, both Forza Horizon and Mirror’s Edge are playable on the Xbox One through that system’s backward compatibility. This is a smart move for Microsoft when it comes to Horizon because that original game should give a significant chunk of its audience a taste of that franchise before Forza Horizon 3 debuts September 27.
Here’s a quick look at each of September’s games.
Forza Horizon