A family plan has been on the cards for a while and now it’s official
Apparently, Phil Spencer has been talking about a family plan for Game Pass for years and now they have made it official.
Microsoft has confirmed the Xbox Game Pass Family Plan and confirmed that it is being tested as we speak in Ireland and Columbia.
Insiders in these two countries can now preview the plan that will allow up to five users to share the same Xbox Game Pass Subscription.
If you have an account added by the main account you will have access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games, content, and benefits. This is supposed to prevent “bottlenecks” for multiple users playing simultaneously.
Tyler Mittleider, senior technical program manager at Microsoft stated:
“ Starting today in Colombia and Ireland, Xbox Insiders can begin to preview a plan that allows multiple people to share Game Pass Ultimate benefits.
This makes it even easier to play the best Game Pass games with friends and family across console, PC, and cloud by enabling you to add up to four people to your subscription, all with their own unique access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games, content, and benefits.”
This new plan offers all the advantages of Game Pass Ultimate, but it appears to be connected to a different kind of plan. “To participate in the preview, you need to purchase the ‘Xbox Game Pass – Insider Preview’ Game Pass plan in the Microsoft Store.”
Your remaining Game Pass membership time will be converted depending on its current worth in dollars, and the new plan appears to be quite a bit more expensive.
The Xbox Insider preview for the new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate plan is currently available in Colombia and Ireland, and signing up for it will convert any remaining time on an existing plan to a new plan “based upon the monetary value of the old membership.”
A trial version of this new family package is currently being made available to users in Ireland for €21.99 per month.
After registering for this new plan, testers can go to the Microsoft Account website and create links to give to friends and family or send four email invitations.
Microsoft currently charges $9.99 per month for Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass. Both lack online multiplayer functionality, but for $14.99 you can upgrade to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which gives you access to Game Pass for consoles, PCs, EA Play, and online multiplayer.
This new “family plan” is good news for those who have friends or family who want to play on their account simultaneously and even though the price will be a bit more than a normal Game Pass subscription it will still save you money rather than having to buy a subscription for each member.