Although Microsoft has made no official announcement yet, the feature will presumably be added universally in an impending system update. Based on the name, it’s likely that select games will be free to play in the Xbox Games Store for single-day chunks of time. We expect the feature will be similar to Steam’s Free Weekend offers.
Microsoft has been showcasing Press Play’s creative platformer for Xbox One since Games with Gold first arrived on Xbox One in June 2014 with Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Halo: Spartan Assault as the console’s first free titles. Free Play Day is another vector for Microsoft to promote particular titles and increase the value proposition of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions.
It is not yet clear whether the day will correspond to a particular calendar day, or 24 hours from whenever you choose to download the game in question. In any case, with the recent announcement of the EA Access subscription service, along with Games with Gold, it is encouraging to see major players in the video game industry experimenting with a wider range of payment and distribution models than the calcified $60 new release price that the industry had settled into.
