And Xbox's first free game for July is... Defense Grid

Newsbrief: As part of Microsoft's 360-to-Xbox-One transition strategy, the company is offering two free games a month to its Gold-level subscribers. The promotion is a fairly transparent bid to catch up with Sony's PlayStation Plus, which has offered free titles to subscribers for a while now. Titles such as Assassin's Creed 2 and Halo 3 are promised to be in the pipeline, but Microsoft has elected to kick off their promotion with another title: Defense Grid: The Awakening. Normally priced at 800 MP ($10 US), the 2009 tower defense game may strike many as a quiet start to Xbox 360's Games for Gold program. The title will be free to download from now until July 15th. UPDATED: As has been pointed out by our readers, Xbox did indeed release Fable 3 under the Games for Gold program last month, making our observations here inaccurate. We have edited the title to reflect this.