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PSA: Xbox Live Gold Family Pack now available
Here's a friendly reminder that the Xbox Live Gold Family Pack is now available. The Family Pack offers up extra four Xbox Live Gold accounts -- along with some extra parental controls -- for $99 a year, a substantial savings over four separate accounts. Before you and three buddies splurge on the Family Pack though, know that there are a few caveats. The most notable restriction is that only the Primary account holder is allowed to make purchases against the Family Pack's billing account. This makes sense for parents looking to regulate what their kids purchase, but it's not terribly convenient for say, your dorm buddies. Thankfully, MS Point cards can be redeemed by any account under the family plan, so it's possible to work around the restriction. Also, all four accounts must reside on the same Xbox before being transferred to a Family Pack. Once an account is part of the Family Pack, however, users are free to recover them on another console. Finally, all content will be licensed to the console on which it was purchased, as well as to the account that purchased it. In other words, if little Jimmy buys an XBLA game, everyone on that console can play it, but Jimmy can play it on any console so long as he logs into Xbox Live. $99 is definitely a good deal for four Live accounts, but we suggest reading through the Family Pack FAQ before taking the plunge.
PSA: Current XBL members can roll accounts into Gold Family Plan
This Xbox Live Gold Family Plan thing is sounding better all the time. Slated to arrive this November, the plan already allows gamers to snag four Xbox Live Gold memberships for $99 (half the usual price), and now Kotaku has learned that current members will able to roll their single accounts into the Family Plan later this year. According to Microsoft's Jerret West, current Live members will receive credit towards the Family Plan based on the value of the remaining time on their current subscriptions. Should that value exceed the $99 price, the extra will simply extend the subscription beyond one year. In other words, you might be getting some Xbox Live Gold time "on the house," depending on how much time you have left on your current pool of subscriptions. Forget this "Family Plan" business, kids. This here is the Dorm Plan.
$99 Xbox Live Gold Family plan available this November
With Kinect, Microsoft is trying to get the whole family playing games. Now it hopes to get the whole family paying for Xbox Live as well, through a discounted "Family" offer. The Xbox Live Gold Family plan, available this November, offers a year of Xbox Live Gold membership to four different family members for a total cost of $99.99, half the normal cost of four individual memberships. It also includes new features, including a "Family Center" menu for managing the family account and content restriction settings, activity reports on Xbox.com, the ability for the "primary account member" to buy and distribute points to other members, and "exclusive family content and discounts." Microsoft is further expanding its family gaming functionality this November with new Family Settings, also due in November. "Family Programming" expands the parental controls to allow the removal of all video and game content of a certain rating level from the Dashboard for younger users, variable by account and password-protected. Title exceptions allow parents to permit certain games rated above the account's maximum level -- for those who can't bear to deny their kids access to Deadly Premonition.
