MS didn't have to do this, so nice work!

still not good enough at the very least announce better games

Wouldn't really agree to that.  It's just as quick on both. 

XBL Store on the other hand is 100 times faster, though.  Sony's new PS Store is complete garbage.  The older one after all the changes it went through was quick and well organized.  The PS Vita and the PSP still use the older PS store, but the PS3 uses the new one.  I think the new PS Store was probably made for the PS4 and they're using it on the PS3 as a beta prior to the release of PS4.  The store itself is actually fairly good when it comes to layout after you use it once and find where everything is at, but it's just so slow.  Checking out is ridiculous. If I wasn't subscribed to PS+ I'd avoid the store at all costs. 

There's really no way to spin this in a negative way. It's a great gift to Xbox Live subscribers, and it's long overdue.

Yes, Halo 3 and Assassin's Creed II are older games, but they're still free. And they won't go away when the Live subscription ends.

I'd still rather that online matchmaking was free, but this program makes the paywall a lot less injurious.

It is interesting to read "through 2013".

Given PS Plus, it wouldn't make sense to get us used to this and suddenly take it away in 2014. It would be ever more fan backlash. They should keep this going with 360 in 2014.

The question is will it apply to XBox 1 Gold subscribers as well? Maybe give away XBLA games until X1 retail games are at least a couple years old and then give those away)?

Either way, this is a great first step to making Gold easier to swallow, and even more reasonable given how Sony followed suit.

I'm hoping it continues to 2014, but I don't know. New console is out in October/November and MS probably wants to give full attention to the new XBox. I believe the Fable 1 will remake will be their last big game for XBox 360, though I was surprised at first because I thought Gears Judgement would be.

Either way free is free. Hoping they put Reach up there since I dumped it a long time ago for Halo 4.

If download speeds are in question, PS is horrible. XBL downloads are much faster. 

Fable 3 and State of Decay, 8GB in total only took 1hr15 minutes. DOA5, 5.5GB took close to 3 hours. There is no reason for a PSN game to take 3 hours when my connection ...

The plan sounds good until I realize that much like PS plus a lot of the free stuff I already played long ago.

It's definitely a nice difference, but as someone said, halo 3 is six years old, and 2 games a month doesn't compare with 8 games a month...games that are great but you might've not played.

I'm just trying to illustrate a point here, not trolling, but what's next on the lineup? Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2? Minecraft?
If it were ps+ version, you'd get Trials HD, Silent Hill, Halo Wars, Viva Pinata and Party animals expansion, Shadow Complex, FF13 and some fps...and then you'd have another 8 games for xbox-portable. I mean, yeah, keeping the game is great...but what's halo 3 worth, when there have been three halo games since then, and four call of duty games?

This starts on July 1st, right?