Several months after the initial report of the Xbox Game Pass “Friends & Family” plan, Xbox has finally begun testing the upcoming plan.
Twitter leaker Aggiornamenti Lumia dropped details about the rumored subscription tier, which would reportedly let up to five people share Game Pass benefits at the same time. At the moment, Xbox is limiting the testing to Colombia and Ireland. But, it’s probably only a matter of time before it’s rolled out to other territories.
Regardless of when it is available for the rest of the world, we’re interested to find out how Xbox intends to minimize the potential abuse of such a shared service.
Xbox isn’t the only company that has experimented with letting subscribers share accounts between households. In the past, others such as Netflix have been burned as total strangers shared and split the costs of a particular service. Given how lax the current testing period is, with Xbox’s only restriction being that users “must reside in the same country as you,” we can expect certain individuals to take advantage of this until Xbox makes changes.
The prevalence of account sharing is what led to Netflix cracking down on such use.
Then again, maybe Microsoft knows what it’s doing. While most people have smartphones, few have Xboxes. Even if multiple households share the same account using the “Friends & Family” plan, this incentivizes people to start buying more Xbox consoles. This might explain why Phil Spencer foresaw a shortage of Xbox supply for the holiday season. If Xbox launches the “Friends & Family” plan in the next few months, then it could be all the more the reason why Xbox Series S and X consoles fly off store shelves.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to pricing. Family plans usually cost twice as much as individual plans. But, “Friends & Family” have no precedent in the gaming industry. Microsoft might end up charging three times more compared to the individual plan. In that case, all of this talk will be for naught. However, Microsoft has always priced its services at a reasonable rate to the point of undercutting the competition.
— Aggiornamenti Lumia (@ALumia_Italia) August 27, 2022
With the PS5 becoming less attractive due to its price hike and constant unavailability, the “Friends & Family” subscription tier for the Game Pass could be what vaults the Xbox Series S and X ahead of its main competition.
