Video game winter sales are live all over the place, including Steam and Green Man Gaming, but if you want to try a game before you buy it, then Microsoft has a selection of titles that are available to play for free all weekend. The free-play weekend is available to all Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers--Ultimate includes Gold in its subscription.

Gold subscribers can play Valkyria Chronicles 4, Goat Simulator, and Puyo Puyo Champions for free until December 22 at 11:59 PM PT / December 23 at 2:59 AM PT. If you want to keep playing these games after the weekend, Microsoft is offering special discounts for Gold subscribers, which you can see below.

• Valkyria Chronicles 4
  • Standard edition -- $15 ($30)
  • Complete edition -- $25 ($50)
  • DLC bundle -- $20 ($25)
• Goat Simulator -- $2.50 ($10)
• Puyo Puyo Champions -- $4 ($10)

If you want to become a Gold subscriber, Microsoft has an offer that gets you your first three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1. The offer comes with three months of Discord Nitro, one month of EA Access, and six months of Spotify Premium. Unfortunately, the latter is only for new Spotify Premium subscribers. However, if you're already subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you can extend your subscription with an awesome deal: 6 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $40.

In addition to the free-play weekend, there's currently an Xbox One winter sale that features quite a few of the best games that released in 2019. The discounted games include A Plague Tale: Innocence, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as well as The Division 2, Borderlands 3, and Resident Evil 2. In some cases, Gold subscribers get even greater discounts.