Xbox Live Games With Gold gave subscribers access to 43 Xbox One and Xbox 360 games in 2022, but the selection was either so old or so mediocre that it’s not worth analyzing.
You may have noticed that Polygon didn’t do an analysis of what Xbox Live’s Games With Gold program offered in 2022, like it did for PlayStation Plus Essential. Honestly, it’s because expectations of that catalog are now so low — and Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in beating them — that it’s just not worthwhile.
Bagging on these games, the majority of which were small-scale titles, largely anonymous when they launched, or launched a decade ago, seems cumulative and even mean-spirited — if not also unfair to their developers. Besides, it’s not as if subscribers are really being tricked into paying for something they don’t use.
