Aaron Souppouris / Engadget
The Xbox Game Pass family plan, which was rumored back in April, is now officially in beta, only initially in Ireland and Colombia. As we’ve heard before, the family plan lets you add up to five people to the same plan, as long as all five are in the same country. All members can enjoy the same service as Game Pass Ultimate, including hundreds of console and PC games, plus cloud gaming.
Existing Game Pass members in both countries have the option to purchase the “Xbox Game Pass – Insider Preview” plan to convert their account to a family plan. The remaining hours of a purchaser’s existing membership subscription will be converted to hours on the family plan based on its monetary equivalent. For example, one month of Game Pass Ultimate hours can be worth 18 days of family planning. Using this as a benchmark, a family plan can be launched for about $25 a month, or $5 per person.
However, only the purchaser of the plan can convert the remaining hours – the other 4 members who join will need to wait for the existing subscription to expire or cancel the subscription before they can join the family plan, and the Xbox All Access plan Users cannot be transferred. Of course, an alternative is to just open a new account and join.
Family plans should be a good option for families that have a game console and each member has their own PC, but Netflix is currently working on family plans that are shared by multiple friends who are not in the same household I don’t know if Microsoft will care about this phenomenon?