With Battlefield 4's multiplayer open beta coming and Grand Theft Auto Online just launched, the coming weekend is a pretty good one for Xboxeers to have Xbox Live Gold membership. If you don't, chin up, as Microsoft is holding a free Gold trial weekend from Friday that'll let we hoi polloi in to nose around and give it a go.

As well as, obviously, online multiplayer, this opens up the Gold-exclusive apps, which range from the MLB and NHL to Hulu and Netflix. Microsoft hopes you'll like them enough to stick around.

The trial weekend will run from Friday through Sunday in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

If you're not on the list, Microsoft has future plans for a few other countries too.