The good news just keep on coming from Microsoft. After the announcement of the Cheaper Xbox One, Microsoft have revealed on their official blog post that online streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix etc would NOT require a Xbox Live Gold account starting from this June.
Gold membership costs almost $60 a year and the Redmond based company got their fair share of criticism when it was a prerequisite for using the video streaming services on Xbox One as people felt that they can not justify paying Microsoft for using a third-party service. They have finally reversed the decision and now you would be able to stream videos directly to your Xbox for free. It should be noted that the charges which are paid to the stream provider is still applicable, you just don’t need to have Xbox Gold to avail the streaming to your Xbox . This means that if you don’t have a netflix account, you wont be able to stream the videos to your console.
Besides the video streaming applications, other services such as Skype, Internet Explorer etc would require only a Xbox Live account, and not a Gold membership. Here is a complete list of the changes made
Microsoft have also assured us that some of the best games such as Forza Motorsports 5 and Ryse: Son of Rome, would be put on discount soon, with the Gold members getting exclusive discount rates of upto 50-75% of their list price.
