Microsoft may not give away as many free games to Xbox Live members as Sony does for PlayStation Plus members, but that doesn't stop the tech behemoth from offering up some high quality games each month.
The way Microsoft does it each month is to offer up one game all month long for the Xbox One and two games for the Xbox 360. The 360's games are split down the middle with one game available for free from the first of the month until the 15th, and the second available for free from the 16th to the end of the month.
Last month saw the popular indie title #IDARB dropping for the Xbox One all month while Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was out for the first half of the month on the Xbox 360 and Sniper Elite V2 took care of the second half of February.
But for March, we wanted to take a look at the possibilities for the new month's free game offerings through the Games with Gold Program on the Xbox Live network. We've seen indie titles grace the Xbox One's free game list for most of last year and so far this year, so that one's hard to predict. But the Xbox 360's two games are usually a surprise as well.
For the Xbox One, we're putting our money on Pneuma: Breath of Life. It officially releases for the network on February 27, which will give it a few days worth of buffer to earn some launch revenue, but throwing it into the free game offering will help get the word out about the game shortly afterwards. The game is a first-person puzzler that tests the limits of your determination and sense of adventure by presenting increasingly more difficult puzzles for you to solve.
For the Xbox 360, our prediction is that Dragon Ball Xenoverse will be free for the first half of the month while Ori and the Blind Forest will take the second half of the month.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse is based on the wildly popular Dragon Ball universe and features a completely destructible 3D universe. The game just launched this month across all major platforms, including Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows. It's the first Dragon Ball games to be released on eighth generation consoles.
Ori and the Blind Forest is an indie platform adventure game that will launch on March 11, putting it in a good spot to enjoy a free spot for Xbox Live members on March 16th.
The game lets you control a white spirit named Ori as he explores more and more of the forest in which he lives. While developer Moon Studios has been tight-lipped about some of the larger aspects of the game's "coming-of-age" story, they have teased that they were influenced by such works as The Lion King and The Iron Giant.
We should find out the official Games with Gold free games on Major Nelson's blog sometime in the next few days as March is right around the corner.
