# Xbox's Family Plan Could Be Free



## Ares (Nov 23, 2009)

*How Xbox 360's Live Gold Family Plan Could Be Free For You*
Jun 25, 2010
By Brian Crecente












When the Xbox Live Gold Family plan hits Xbox Live this November, you may not have to pay a penny to sign up, depending on how many existing paid accounts you have.


The Family plan includes four one-year Xbox Live gold memberships for $100. Currently, one-year gold memberships run about $50 a pop. So how, I asked Jerret West, senior group product manager of Xbox Live subscriptions, is Microsoft going to do the math on people rolling their individual plans into the family plan?
"Solving for something like that was like solving for the matrix," West said. "You will be able to migrate your core accounts over and pick up credit for those."


West said that Microsoft will look at the value of the remaining time you have left on the total number of accounts you are rolling over into the Family plan and then give you the appropriate amount of credit towards the $99 sign-up fee.
If the accounts you are rolling into the plan have more credit than the $99 it costs to start the plan, Microsoft will extend your membership for the appropriate number of months.


While the four gold accounts have to be created on the same Xbox 360, they don't have to stay on the same Xbox 360, West confirmed. The one draw back to this is that even if those accounts are spread to multiple consoles, all of their charges will still go to a single credit card. Though it seems to me that if you create a master account, you could just lock off the ability to purchase on those three accounts... or, if you're annoyed, prevent them from playing mature games. OK, so maybe not the best plan for a frat house.


I also asked West if there were any thoughts of allowing households with more than four gold accounts to join the family plan for a set fee per an account, like maybe charging an extra $20 or $30 for every account over the four included in the plan.


"Four is the magic number right now," West said. "But that's on the table. We want to see how this works out first though."


*Source: Kotaku*


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## Moonfly (Aug 1, 2008)

Looks to me like they are just working with EA to try get more acceptance of the vip code thing. They can stick it, why on earth should any house have to pay more than a single subscription, its like cable TV asking for a fee for each person in your house. An utter disgrace IMO, and its bad enough that XBL is the only online service we have to pay for as it is. If it were upto me, I'd get the entire world to quit the service tomorrow, they would soon realise that micro transactions pay for enough as it is.

Here is an idea, 1 gold membership per household, and upto 6 profiles can be attached to it. VIP codes work for all members of the same house. This is a much more fair system or before we know it, they will be ringing us for service calls and giving us the bill.


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## Ares (Nov 23, 2009)

Simple unadulterated greed, I agree that they should change their model to one household gold membership with up to six profiles it makes sense. We have the CEO of Activison talking about a subscription model for COD, EA has lost their minds, and now this. 2010 has been a bad year for gamers not in terms of games but in the way the Big 3 and Game publishers trying to nickle and dime gamers for everything and it looks like this mentality is here to stay.


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## Moonfly (Aug 1, 2008)

Unless we do something about it, but guess most people are happy to hand over everything they earn. Imagine if the entire WoW community suddenly cancelled their subscriptions asking for 20% off. It would happen over night and they would still make millions.

I'm getting really tired of the way they seem to be spending half their energy on inventing news ways to charge for stuff. At this rate its going to cost us 1 MSP everytime we press a button on the controller, and online gaming time will be pay per play. More like the arcades of old in your home. Insert more credits for another game!


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## Ares (Nov 23, 2009)

At that point they might as well put a coin slot on the next gen consoles.


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