Ever since the Xbox One arrived back in 2013, Microsoft’s machines have supported a “Home console” feature that enables those with two Xboxes in a home to share games between them. It’s useful, to be sure — but what if you have many Xboxes in your household? How do you split something like Xbox Game Pass between all of them?
At the moment, you can’t. But Xbox boss Phil Spencer certainly likes the idea of developing a “family plan” at some point.
At the moment, an Xbox Game Pass subscription either costs $9.99 per month each for the PC and console tiers, or $14.99 per month for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both tiers and access to cloud gaming. Some kind of family-focused subscription would definitely bring the cost down if you’ve got, say, four or five Xboxes in the home (though that has to be an edge case, right?).
Honestly, though, I would really like to see Microsoft tackle a better year-long price for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate first. At the moment, Ultimate ends up costing one user $180 per year. While there’s an argument to be made for the value of the service and the potential money saved not buying games, there should really be an option to purchase a year up front at a discount. It’s kind of wild something like this doesn’t exist yet.
At any rate, we’ll keep an eye out for more news on the Game Pass family plans. Perhaps once the world returns to more normalcy — and people can start utilizing xCloud while they’re out and about again — there’ll be more of a demand for multiple family members using the same Game Pass subscription at the same time.