Free Xbox 360 Games If You Have Xbox Live Gold Subscription

I know this isn’t programming related (and thus doesn’t quite go with the theme of my blog), but I thought I’d share an Pass this along to anybody you know that has an Xbox 360.

At E3 Microsoft announced that it would start giving away 2 free games a month to Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

On July 1st Assassin’s Creed 2 and Halo 3 will be available to download for free.

Right now you can go download Fable 3 for free. I downloaded it last night, so it’s legit. Also, I’m in Canada so it looks like this is available to more markets than just the US. Woot!

To download the games, from your 360 dashboard go to: Games menu, Browse Games, Featured menu, Free with gold, [game] (in this case Fable 3).

The free games are supposed to rotate every month, so you have to get them while they are still available. The XBox page says that they will be making a new game available for free on the 1st and 16th of every month, so do I like did and make some calendar reminders for yourself to get the games for free while they are still available so that you don’t forget.

The games are only available in download format though, so if you only have the small 20GB hard drive (HD) or your HD is almost full, you might want to be selective about which games you get. Fable 3 is about 5.5GB. Also, if you delete the game from your HD down the road, you won’t be able to download it for free again. You can purchase larger hard drives for your 360 if you want, or use a USB mass storage device (up to 32GB) to store your games on (I guess not all USB sticks are compatible with the 360; here’s a compatibility list I found).

An Xbox Live Gold subscription is about $5/month, so it pretty much pays for itself now by getting 2 free games a month.

I remember reading somewhere that they would only be releasing the 2 free games a month until the Xbox One comes out in November 2013, but I can’t find that source now, so I’m not sure if that’s true or not.

If your dad is a gamer this tidbit could be your poor-man’s father’s day gift to him :P

It has also been brought to my attention that Sony has been offering something similar for PS+ subscribers for over a year now, where they get free games each month for PS3, PSP, and PS Vita. The difference is that you need to be a PS+ subscriber in order to play the free games, where with the Xbox once you download the game it is yours regardless of if you discontinue your Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Happy gaming!