FYI - Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack is available

[Queasy]

I remember someone asking about this the other day. It's here now.

The Gold Family Pack rolls in at $99.99 and comes with some additional benefits on top of being $140 cheaper than buying four Gold memberships separately.

• Family Center: an easy-to-use destination accessible on Dash and Xbox.com to manage your family’s memberships and online settings
• Gift Microsoft Points Allowances: give an allowance of Microsoft Points to family members
• Activity Reports: sign into Xbox.com to view reports on your family’s activity on Xbox LIVE
• Family Pack Deal: enjoy discounts on family-friendly games and more

Existing Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers can get an even better deal by having their subscription fee discounted based on how many months are left on their existing memberships. You get $5 off the Gold Family Pack for each month (up to 20 months) you have left on your single Gold membership. Not a bad deal considering that you likely paid $4.17 or less if you bought your Gold membership prior to the price hike.

If you have any other family members that have Gold subscription you can get one month added on to the total plan for every two months. For example, if someone else has 6 months remaining on their membership then an additional 3 months will be added.

If you are in a family with multiple consoles, you'll need to make sure that all Gold memberships are on the same Xbox 360. After that, their gamertag can be recovered on another console and have full access to Xbox LIVE.

Check out the Gold Family Pack page on Xbox.com or the FAQ for more information.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I wonder if it'll be possible to share this with your friends... sort of like Amazon Prime or Steam packs. Potentially $25/year for XBL. But that's probably against the rules or something.

 

[blurredvision]

I wonder if it'll be possible to share this with your friends... sort of like Amazon Prime or Steam packs. Potentially $25/year for XBL. But that's probably against the rules or something.

From the FAQ:

Q: I have multiple consoles in my family. Does my Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack have to reside only one of those consoles?

A: When an individual is added to an Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack, that person’s Xbox LIVE account must be on the same console as the primary account holder. However, once they are a part of your Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack, that person could recover their account on a different console and still remain a part of the Family Pack, as long as they reside in the same country as the primary account holder.


Q: Could a group of friends or roommates share an Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack?

A: The Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack is really designed for families. Only the primary account holder may make purchases against their own billing account, which is designed to help families better manage their entertainment budget. The primary account holder will also receive Activity Monitoring reports, and have the ability to access online Family Settings for other members in the Family Pack. As a result, the Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack may not work well for groups of friends or roommates.

Sounds like it's doable, but the primary account holder would need to be trustworthy since they'll need the other username and passwords. After they're linked up, you're good to go. The rest of the FAQ clearly states that Microsoft Points and purchases are still tied to only the one account that initiates it.

 

[mugs]

That's awesome that you can do a discounted upgrade from a regular membership. I just put a new 13 month card on my main account. This is great for me since I actually have 4 360s now. 😳 Having two separate gold accounts before was a PITA because of DLC.

 

[BoleyWV]

I was one of the folks asking about the family pack earlier, so thanks for posting this thread. Sounds like the family plan is actually a fairly well thought out and consumer friendly idea. One interesting tidbit I noticed is that downloaded content (I assume DLC for games) is shared by all users on the primary console

Q: If I purchase an Xbox LIVE Arcade game, does it belong to everyone in the family?

A: Purchased content such as games and movies are licensed both to the console it was purchased on, and the individual Gold member that purchased it. So if, for example, your child were to buy an Xbox LIVE Arcade game on your home console, anyone on your console can play it. Additionally, if they leave for college, they could recover their account on another Xbox 360 in their dorm room and be able to play the game when logged into their account from that Xbox 360.

If I read that correctly, it almost sounds like you could pay for content one time and end up with it on two consoles. In the above quote, it sounds like the arcade game would follow the kid to college and still remain on the original console.

It seems like one could essentially double dip on all DLC by purchasing content on the primary Xbox and then recovering it on a second Xbox that belongs to a "family member".

 

[blurredvision]

If I read that correctly, it almost sounds like you could pay for content one time and end up with it on two consoles. In the above quote, it sounds like the arcade game would follow the kid to college and still remain on the original console.

It seems like one could essentially double dip on all DLC by purchasing content on the primary Xbox and then recovering it on a second Xbox that belongs to a "family member".

If I'm not mistaken, you can do this already just with a single Gold account. The machine you originally purchase it on holds the license and anybody on that console can use it. If you move your gamertag to another console, the console license doesn't follow unless you tell it to (using the license transfer process online), so only the gamertag who bought the content can use it on the second console.

If I'm wrong on that, somebody feel free to yell at me, but I'm pretty confident that's right.

 

[Queasy]

If I'm not mistaken, you can do this already just with a single Gold account. The machine you originally purchase it on holds the license and anybody on that console can use it. If you move your gamertag to another console, the console license doesn't follow unless you tell it to (using the license transfer process online), so only the gamertag who bought the content can use it on the second console.

If I'm wrong on that, somebody feel free to yell at me, but I'm pretty confident that's right.

Yep. That's pretty much what I do now. I'll buy games my kids will be interested in on the Xbox in the playroom and play with my gamertag on the Xbox that's hooked up to the big TV.

 

[Hopeless]

I wonder if it'll be possible to share this with your friends... sort of like Amazon Prime or Steam packs. Potentially $25/year for XBL. But that's probably against the rules or something.

If you have a little money you might want to check slickdeals. Someone posted over there a sku to use at best buy to get $20 off a year card. If your store still has the older $49.99 ones that takes it down to $29.99 which is a little more but you wouldn't have to mess around with who has the primary acct. Although I'm not sure when it expires.

 

[blurredvision]

So has anyone else taken advantage of this with friends who don't live with you? I'm going to convert mine over to a family pack tonight and add on a couple of friends. The fourth account will be for my wife when she gets her Kinect as a gift later this month. My two friends are well aware of the minor stipulations, although both of them are stupidly paying month-to-month right now, so $25 for a year is well worth it considering they are currently paying $10/month.

They are going to come over tonight, recover their gamertags on my console, and then I'll sign up for the family plan under my gamertag and add them in. Then they'll go back home and recover their gamertag back to their respective consoles.

I've researched this pretty thoroughly and the entire process seems pretty cut and dry. Just wondering if anyone else did this and ran into any unforeseen issues. I'm confident nobody has, but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.

 

[Spongo]

So has anyone else taken advantage of this with friends who don't live with you? I'm going to convert mine over to a family pack tonight and add on a couple of friends. The fourth account will be for my wife when she gets her Kinect as a gift later this month. My two friends are well aware of the minor stipulations, although both of them are stupidly paying month-to-month right now, so $25 for a year is well worth it considering they are currently paying $10/month.

They are going to come over tonight, recover their gamertags on my console, and then I'll sign up for the family plan under my gamertag and add them in. Then they'll go back home and recover their gamertag back to their respective consoles.

I've researched this pretty thoroughly and the entire process seems pretty cut and dry. Just wondering if anyone else did this and ran into any unforeseen issues. I'm confident nobody has, but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.

I'm curious to see how this pans out for you. Keep us posted, please! BTW, I can't believe your friends are paying month-to-month!

 

[blurredvision]

I'm curious to see how this pans out for you. Keep us posted, please! BTW, I can't believe your friends are paying month-to-month!

Yeah, they're stupid for doing it but they both know they're stupid, so at least that's something, right? 😉 They just don't think about it and therefore just renews every month in the background.

I'll definitely report back with exactly how we proceeded through the setup and the results.

 

[blurredvision]

OK, so my two buddies and I got this done tonight with no problems whatsoever. The very first thing we did was recover both of their gamertags on my console. This took a few minutes due to their expansive games and achievement history, probably took about 15-20 minutes total to recover both combined.

On the dashboard, they were still showing the deal where if you upgraded your single gold sub to a family sub, they would give you 12+1 months plus 800 Microsoft points, so I went through that dash ad to sign up. I had seen it earlier but couldn't find it when I was ready to sign up. I just shut the XBOX all the way off and powered back up, and there it was. The extra month (which you can't get just going through the normal way of upgrading) and points were a pretty damn good deal.

My gamertag is the primary account holder. My current 1-year gold sub was due to expire on June 11th, 2011. With today being December 3rd, 2010, it still offered me a $35 discount on the first year's $99 price ($5 per month). It was much closer to 6 months left than 7, but I'll take the extra $5.

Once I was signed up, it led me automatically to a screen where I could add 3 more gamertags to the plan. The deal with the family plan is that for anyone you add that currently has a gold sub with time left, it will grant the entire family plan 1 month for each 2 months they had left. As I said before, both of my buddies were on month-to-month plans, so I didn't expect anything. However, I was very surprised to see it give the family plan an extra month for each of them. So it appears that they are very, very generous with how they calculate time left on accounts. They are definitely erring on the side of caution so as not to piss people off.

So I ended up getting the standard 12 months, +1 month for the deal that was advertised on the dashboard, +1 month for one buddy and +1 month for the other.

After I got done adding them, they went on home and recovered their gamertags on their consoles and were good to go. I even deleted their profiles off my console once they left and before they recovered on their console, so there's no need to keep their profiles at any point after you've signed them up.

Once in the family plan, it adds a Family Center tile on the dashboard next to my profile tile (which is next to the game launch tile, in case I'm not being clear enough). It appears that I have the ability to configure their overall XBOX settings, stuff like who their friends list can be seen by or if the title of a movie they are watching shows up in their presence text or if they're allowed to voice chat with everyone, just friends, or nobody.....stuff like that. I'll obviously not touch any of their stuff, but just be warned if you ever think about doing this deal with somebody you don't actually know. There is an option for each member in the family pack to remove them immediately. The option to add a new member to the account (provided there is an opening) is in here as well, so when I create my 4th account for my wife, I'll go here to add her.

Other than that, it all went off without a hitch. They each gave me their $25 and I paid the extra $15 since I'm keeping the 4th account. I started with one gold account that ended June 11th, 2011....now I have two gold accounts ending March 3rd, 2012, and it will only cost me $50 to renew them at that time. Plus, I have 800 points coming to me at some point within the next 6-8 weeks. All in all, a hell of a deal. One of my buddies is kind of sad that he can't buy Microsoft points directly from the dash now, but he said it was well worth the $25 for 15 months rather than the effective $120/year he was paying.

 

[Q]

I need to figure out how to do this, I have 2 brothers who also have accounts (and me = 3), but those instructions seem a bit of a pain. We all have our own 360 as well. May give this a look over once finals are over and I'm back home on break.

 

[blurredvision]

I need to figure out how to do this, I have 2 brothers who also have accounts (and me = 3), but those instructions seem a bit of a pain. We all have our own 360 as well. May give this a look over once finals are over and I'm back home on break.

It's not really a pain, I was just trying to be thorough and probably wrote a little too much.

Step 1: Recover all the gamertags that are to be entered into the family plan onto one console.
Step 2: Sign up for the family plan while signed into the account that you want to be the primary account holder.
Step 3: Add those recovered gamertags to the family plan when it asks you to.
Step 4: Have all of the secondary accounts go back home and recover their gamertags on their own consoles.

That's it. As long as the secondary account holders are aware that they'll not be able to attach a credit card to their account and that the primary account holder has the ability to change their privacy settings, then you're good to go.

 

[AstroManLuca]

The inability to use a credit card would kill it for me. Everyone I know who has a 360 at least occasionally buys things like map packs or XBLA games. I suppose they could buy points cards and add them. Otherwise, would you be able to buy things for them if you have the primary account? Or can DLC and other stuff only be purchased for the primary account?

 

[Queasy]

The inability to use a credit card would kill it for me. Everyone I know who has a 360 at least occasionally buys things like map packs or XBLA games. I suppose they could buy points cards and add them. Otherwise, would you be able to buy things for them if you have the primary account? Or can DLC and other stuff only be purchased for the primary account?

The primary account holder can purchase points and allocate them to secondary accounts.

 

[tatteredpotato]

The primary account holder can purchase points and allocate them to secondary accounts.

True but it is still slightly a pain... you'd probably want to think ahead for big purchases or keep a running balance for random purchases. It at least means you need to know the account holder well enough you trust them with your CC info, or they trust you enough to pay them back.

 

[sygyzy]

OK, so my two buddies and I got this done tonight with no problems whatsoever.

I seriously need to thank you for a bang up job writing this up. It was well written and explained the setup and your special circumstances very clearly. It sounds like a great idea as long as everyone knows/trusts each other. I personally don't find any pleasure in messing with someone else's privacy settings (ooooh ahhh) and I think others would agree. I doubt that'd be a real issue anyway.

Just curious, and sorry if you've answered, but say Friend #3 wants to buy an Xbox Arcade game. How does he do it if he can't buy points directly? Do you need to buy points from the master account? Then what? I assume the points are tied to the main/master Family account. Do you notify Friend #3 that points are available for him to use? What if Friend #2 inadvertently sees available points and uses them first, effectively robbing Friend #3?

Edit: I guess Queasy answered my question - you can allocate points to specific accounts.

Edit 2: Just confirming that the 3 other accounts you add to the family plan do not necessary have to be existing Live customers, right? My friend is buying my 360 and he'll want Live. He currently is not a member, obviously.

 

[blurredvision]

True but it is still slightly a pain... you'd probably want to think ahead for big purchases or keep a running balance for random purchases. It at least means you need to know the account holder well enough you trust them with your CC info, or they trust you enough to pay them back.

Or the person who has the secondary account can just buy a points card and redeem the code under their account.

All options for a secondary account to get points in order to buy DLC aren't ideal, but it's hard (if not impossible) to beat the $25/year if you have 3 friends who you trust enough to team up with.

 

[blurredvision]

Edit 2: Just confirming that the 3 other accounts you add to the family plan do not necessary have to be existing Live customers, right? My friend is buying my 360 and he'll want Live. He currently is not a member, obviously.

That's correct. I still have one "spot" open for my family pack, which is waiting on my wife to get her Kinect for Christmas. When she's ready, we'll create her a gamertag on my console, sign it up for an XBOX Live silver account, then I'll log into my gamertag, go into the Family Center tile, and add her newly formed account to the 4th slot.

One thing I did notice is that after signing up for the family plan, it added a new Family Center to my account online at xbox.com. It also shows me there that I have one spot open and gives me the option to add somebody there, but it's required that a gamertag be present on the console with the primary account holder, so I wonder how that works.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Or the person who has the secondary account can just buy a points card and redeem the code under their account.

All options for a secondary account to get points in order to buy DLC aren't ideal, but it's hard (if not impossible) to beat the $25/year if you have 3 friends who you trust enough to team up with.

So secondary accounts can still redeem cards? That wouldn't be horrible (although it still requires you to think out all purchases, which is probably a good thing anyways).

 

[sygyzy]

If secondary accounts can redeem Live points cards and/or be allocated points from the Master Account, how is this not the BEST possible scenario for a secondary account user? In this thread we basically worked through any cons the secondary account has (besides being at the mercy of the master account in regards to privacy controls and similar settings). What am I missing here?

 

[blurredvision]

So secondary accounts can still redeem cards? That wouldn't be horrible (although it still requires you to think out all purchases, which is probably a good thing anyways).

Yes. Just to have it typed out, there are basically two ways for a secondary account to acquire points.

1. The primary account holder can purchase points with their credit card and then grant an allowance to anyone in the family plan. Whether cash or friendly credit is involved between the two friends is up to you. 😉
2. The secondary account holder can buy a points card and redeem the code while signed in with their gamertag. The points are theirs to keep and are tied to their gamertag.

It's funny that the option to give secondary accounts points is actually called "grant allowance". My friend saw this and later on when I told him that he'd get his share of the 800 bonus points when they were put into my account, he responded with, "thanks daddy". 😀

 

[blurredvision]

If secondary accounts can redeem Live points cards and/or be allocated points from the Master Account, how is this not the BEST possible scenario for a secondary account user? In this thread we basically worked through any cons the secondary account has (besides being at the mercy of the master account in regards to privacy controls and similar settings). What am I missing here?

You're not missing anything, those are the only two drawbacks to being a secondary account that I can find. I'm not sure how Games on Demand works though, that may be a third drawback. Games on Demand, for some reason, don't abide by the points system and use straight money charges. Since you can't tie a credit card to a secondary account, I'd imagine you can't buy on-demand.

 

[blurredvision]

As the primary account holder, here are the settings I can change for the accounts on my family pack. As you can see, the primary account has complete control over the other accounts and can even kick them from the plan at any time without penalty. I can also see how many Microsoft points each account has and I can go into a chart to see how much time they've been spending in certain games and apps (i.e. Netflix, ESPN, etc). It's highly recommended you don't go into this with a primary account holder who is hot-headed or not a close friend you can trust.

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