‘Watch Dogs’, ‘Assassin’s Creed III’, And ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ Top Free Xbox One Games With Gold For June

The June lineup of free games for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 was announced Tuesday by Microsoft. Owners with an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription will get three AAA titles plus an all-new indie game. As a bonus, Games with Gold is throwing in a free multiplayer DLC pack for the recently re-released Phantom Dust.

Games with Gold for June will start things off with a new indie multiplayer title called SpeedRunners, available for free on the Xbox One for the entire month. It will be joined by a Xbox 360 backward compatible AAA title from Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed III. It will only be available until June 15.

Two more titles will be added on June 16. Another AAA Ubisoft game, Watch Dogs, becomes available as a free download through July 15. It will be joined by the classic BioWare Xbox 360 role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins, which will only be part of the Games with Gold program through the end of June.

Additionally, a Phantom Dust Multiplayer DLC pack will be available for free for the entire month of June for Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers. It’s not clear if this is the same DLC pack currently available for free or a new one that will be released next month.

SpeedRunners

This indie title has already been on Steam for a year but is leaping to the Xbox One at the start of June. SpeedRunners is a competitive multiplayer game that is a mix of Mario Kart and the Xbox 360 Ninja platforming game N+. It is a four-player racing game that will have players running, jumping, swinging, and using weapons and power-ups to take out their opponents.

SpeedRunners has received “Very Positive” overall reviews on Steam thus far and should be a natural fit when it makes the transition to console.

Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs was Ubisoft’s first new open-world title released for current-gen consoles that unfortunately did not live up to the pre-release hype. Players take on the role of Aiden Pearce as he uses Chicago’s citywide security system to strike back against the corrupt individuals responsible for his family’s death.

The game ultimately earned a 78 Metacritic score following its 2014 release and spawned a sequel released this past fall.

Assassin’s Creed 3

Another Ubisoft AAA release, this time for the Xbox 360. This was the Assassin’s Creed series first step away from the Ezio character in many years and into slightly more modern times. This is the story of Connor’s fight against the Templars during the Revolutionary War.

Assassin’s Creed 3 was a bit glitchy at release, which is part of the reason why it scored an 84 on Metacritic. Most of those bugs have been fixed by now and those that haven’t played the game yet will have a chance to try out one of the better open-world settings and multiplayer in the franchise.

Dragon Age: Origins

Owing greatly to Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age: Origins is a step into a new fantasy world created by BioWare. For those that may have played Inquisition, this is an opportunity to visit the franchise’s origins.

Dragon Age: Origins on consoles was not as full featured as the PC version, but it was still good enough to earn an 86 Metacritic score.

As a reminder, some May Games with Gold titles are still available to download for free. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams will be available until the end of May along with LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Meanwhile, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris will be available to download free through June 15.

As the Inquisitr previously covered, Xbox One manages backward compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Following that, testing to make sure the game runs correctly on the Xbox One appears to be a time-consuming task. Microsoft has to test each game from beginning to end to ensure the emulator runs the title correctly. This can take hundreds of hours depending on the title.

Additionally, Microsoft uses an Xbox Uservoice group to gauge interest in which titles to add to the Xbox One backward compatibility library. Users can suggest and vote up which games they would like to see supported.

[Featured Image by Ubisoft]