With the festive season around the corner, Xbox Gold subscribers have been lined up for exciting Xbox Live Games for the month of December 2015, according to Gospel Herald.

Microsoft's gaming console, Xbox has made available free games worth $900 for its Gold subscription members. Each subscriber of the Xbox Live Gold membership with $60 fee has the flexibility to choose from almost 42 game titles for free download, reported Xbox Wire.

Every year Microsoft releases a set of games, from the different franchise, which have released games or about to release next year. This pattern of free games on Xbox Live reveals the details of upcoming major game releases on Xbox for the next year.

Christian Today reported that the strategy followed by Microsoft is that the company releases few games on Xbox Live for free, for which a sequel or new gameplay is in the making. This helps the players to get a feel of the original game before its new version is launched on Xbox.

Last year, "The Witcher 2" game was made free on Xbox Live platform, just before the release of its next installment "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunter." The same strategy was followed with the Tomb Raider series of games just before "Rise of Tomb Raider" was launched on Xbox.

Jobs And Hire reported that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, which is a role-playing game, has been made free and available for the Gold members for the whole month of December. The game Thief, which focuses mostly on stealing from the rich, will be available from December 15, 2015, to January 15, 2016.

The players who have Xbox 360 gaming console will be able to play "Castle Storm" for free till December 15. Then for the rest of the month, Xbox 360 gamers will be able to enjoy two games, Sacred 3 and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

The Xbox One players can also play these free games on Xbox 360; the only catch is that their consoles system needs to be updated with the backwards compatibility feature.