First announced during E3 2013, the Games with Gold program offers free Xbox 360 games to users who purchase Gold-level memberships for Xbox Live. The program was extended to the new Xbox One console one year later.
Xbox 360
Players with active Xbox Live Gold memberships (excluding trial memberships and "Free Gold" weekends) may download the games during their respective availability periods. When downloaded, the game belongs to the user even if they subsequently drop their Xbox Live Gold membership. Two titles are released a month, with the exception of June 2014 (which saw a third game released alongside the second to celebrate the one year anniversary of the program), April 2015 (which saw the release of four games, two in each half) and December 2015 (which saw a third game released alongside the second). The first game is free to download from the first of the month until the fifteenth, and then the second being available to download from the sixteenth until the end of the month.
Future Games with Gold releases for Xbox 360 are made available for Xbox One through its backward compatibility system, which began in November 2015.