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Microsoft has confirmed a rumored Xbox Game Pass family plan by announcing early testing for the program in Colombia and Ireland.
As of today, Xbox Insiders in Colombia and Ireland can preview a new plan that lets up to five users share the same Xbox Game Pass subscription. Any accounts added by the main user will have "their own unique access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games, content, and benefits," seemingly preventing any bottlenecks for multiple users playing at the same time. You should in theory be able to play Halo Infinite campaign co-op via one Xbox Game Pass subscription, for example.
This new plan provides all the benefits Game Pass Ultimate, but it's apparently tied to a new type of plan. Microsoft's post makes it clear that "to participate in the preview, you need to purchase the 'Xbox Game Pass – Insider Preview' Game Pass plan in the Microsoft Store." This will convert your remaining Game Pass subscription time based on its monetary value, and the new plan seems to be a fair bit more expensive.
A full 30 days of Game Pass Ultimate is worth 18 days of this Insider Preview family plan, for reference. Microsoft hasn't released an exact pricing breakdown for the new plan, but since Game Pass Ultimate is normally $15 a month (or 50 cents a day), we can estimate that the new plan will be about $25 a month (roughly 83 cents a day) by working backwards from $15 spread across 18 days.
The math works out to exactly $25, which is almost too clean to be a coincidence, assuming this pricing is final. This is a pretty decent price hike from a standard subscription, but if you factor in four or five people on one sub, it might be a pretty good deal for your situation.
"Conversion is final, and users must wait for their new membership to expire before returning to a previous membership," Microsoft noted in a disclaimer. The company also clarified that Xbox All Access members won't be able to participate in this preview for the new plan.
Interestingly, Microsoft gaming head and Xbox boss Phil Spencer first floated the idea of a Game Pass family plan way back in December 2020. "It's something we'd like to do," he said at the time.
This program is still limited to Colombia and Ireland for the time being, but once it's available in more regions, you'll be able to share your subscription with anyone in the same country as you without strict household-only limitations. We've reached out to Microsoft for more details.
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