xbox live gold XBox Live Gold Family Pack Notice Email

[Shadrack]

This just came in my inbox.  Thought I would share it here.  Sorry if this has already been posted.

 

Looks like XBox Live Gold Family Packs will be converted to individual Live Gold accounts in late August.  Each account in the Gold Family Pack will be credited with 3 months past the end date.  So that is some good news.

 

Looks like you will only need 1 Gold account for XBox One and everyone can play online.  That's some great news.  I hope they apply the same feature to the XBox 360.  Without a discounted Family Pack, I don't think my family could afford the 4 Gold accounts a year that my step-children use.

 

 

As a valued Xbox Live Gold member, we'd like to thank you and your family for being part of the Gold community.

 

We continually evaluate our offerings and are always working to provide services that best meet the needs of our customers.

 

 

 

    Starting August 27, 2013, we will be converting each activated account on your Gold Family Pack to an individual Xbox Live Gold membership to prepare for new upcoming features on Xbox Live Gold. Rest assured, each individual membership will work on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

    Through the new Home Gold feature on Xbox One, a single Xbox Live Gold membership will allow anyone in your home to enjoy many Gold features like multiplayer, access to Gold entertainment apps, and more on your Xbox One.*

 

    As a bonus, we will give each converted individual Xbox Live Gold membership from your Gold Family Pack an extra 3 months of Gold (in addition to the time remaining on your membership term).**

 

    Before your memberships convert, you can still add family members to your Xbox Live Gold Family Pack, for a total of up to four accounts. However, any unassigned secondary accounts will no longer be accessible after your conversion. Please be sure to update your secondary accounts here.

 

After your memberships convert, the only Gold Family Pack features that will no longer be available are activity monitoring reports and Microsoft Points allowances. Activity monitoring reports will deactivate at the time of Gold Family Pack conversion, whereas the Microsoft Points allowance feature will no longer be available after the next Xbox 360 system update. Xbox Live family settings, including parental controls for what your kids can access and play on or offline, will still be available.

 

We hope you enjoy your 3 bonus months of Xbox Live Gold and continue to benefit from your Xbox Live Gold memberships on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

Sincerely,

The Xbox Live Team

[HawkMan]

I'm just wondering how the one xbox gold account works for multiple Xbox Ones, or 1 xbox one and two 360's ... 

[Shadrack]

I'm sure there are restrictions. The face that they are so specific with their language, "on Xbox One", leads me to believe the feature won't exist in the same way on the 360.

They have a FAQ but I didn't see it addressing your question.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/billing-and-subscriptions/parental-controls/family-pack-convert-individual-member-faq

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

I'm just wondering how the one xbox gold account works for multiple Xbox Ones, or 1 xbox one and two 360's ... 

 

Home Gold is restricted to 1 Xbox One

 

Home Gold confined to one console; MS confirms points replaced with cash

 

Microsoft has confirmed that it'll replace its Gold Family Pack with individual Xbox Live Gold memberships in order to prepare for new upcoming features on Xbox Live Gold. 

 

Replacing Family Gold is the new Home Gold feature on Xbox One, which on a single Xbox Live Gold membership will allow anyone in the home to enjoy some but not all of Xbox LIVE's Gold features such as multiplayer and access to Gold entertainment apps.

Unfortunately, unlike the Gold Family pack, the Home Gold feature will be limited to one console, therefore if someone in your household has a separate Xbox One or even a separate Xbox 360 then you'll will need to buy another Xbox LIVE Gold membership in order to access Gold services on that console.

 

As an example, Xbox LIVE Gold for a family of four now costs ?40x4 for each individual, in other words ?160, whereas before it'd cost around ?60.

 

The Family Gold pack offered a significant saving for families, so it's a shame to see it go.

 

In other news, Microsoft has confirmed that transactions on Xbox will soon take place using your local currency instead of Microsoft Points. After the next Xbox 360 system update, when you next choose to initiate a purchase or redeem a Points card or code with your Microsoft account, Microsoft will put into your account an amount of currency equal to or greater than the marketplace value of your Microsoft Points. Your Microsoft Points will be retired, and you?ll immediately be able to use your new funds, in addition to other current payment methods available in your region.

Microsoft Points codes you received as part of Xbox Live Rewards, promotions, or contests will retain their original expiration dates after your account transitions.

 

 

http://www.shopto.net/news/43672/Home-Gold-confined-to-one-console;-MS-confirms-points-replaced-with-cash/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

 

Le's just hope they have a transfer tool in place when X1's break / die (N).

 

As for Family Packs, this is old news. They stopped selling/renewing them in March IIRC. Really ###### news for 360 owners (N)

[George P Global Moderator]

Limiting the overall Xbox Live sharing to your first/main XB1 makes sense, if you want to use it on a 2nd, well, it'll be limited ofc but you can just as well sign-in with your gold account and then as long as you're signed in you share part of your gold features with anyone else using the 2nd XB1.   If you want the full Home Gold sharing abilities though, then it looks like you need a 2nd gold account.  Honestly, this makes sense though, because of how they let you share your account/games on the system even without logging in.  That means the account is tied to the hardware ID you first place it on.  Anytime it's used on a different XB1 it's counted as a roaming profile/account and limited.

 

Since you don't have to pay for everyone to have gold, like you paid with the family pack though at a reduced price.  Now on the XB1 you pay for gold and everyone else using that same system gets access to it without paying anything.  So before when you paid for 4 accounts, now, if you have 2 XB1s in the house, you'll pay for 2 accounts, get it at a discounted price then you're saving.   As far as the 360 goes, who knows?  It talks about upcoming changes, I think the 360 could see a big change in the Gold policies in place for it, since it's at the end of it's life.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if MS changes things on the 360 later to make it more of a pure media player and limit Gold just to MP and a few other things.  They'll keep the 360 around for another 2 or so years until they can drop the price of the XB1 down close to it and finally stop selling the 360.  That's what I see being the plan, we'll know in time though.

[Shadrack]

Unless they apply the same members benefits to the xbox 360, Gold Live accounts will be significantly more expensive this year for my family because of this :(.  We have 2 XBox 360s in the house and at least 3 people that use multiplayer features of xbox gold live often.  That's $180/year ($60/year X 3) instead of the $99/year for 4 family accounts.

 

So it looks like MS is pushing us to get XBox Ones in order to save money on Gold Live... which is fine if all that we have is an Xbox One, but if we have either 2 Xbox Ones or an Xbox One and a 360 we are looking at $120 for 2 gold memberships as oppose to $99 for 4 gold memberships.

 

This really isn't that great IMO.  Looks like if the kids want to play their games online with their friends they are going to have to be paying out of their own allowance savings or ask for it for Christmas.

[George P Global Moderator]

Unless they apply the same members benefits to the xbox 360, Gold Live accounts will be significantly more expensive this year for my family because of this :(.  We have 2 XBox 360s in the house and at least 3 people that use multiplayer features of xbox gold live often.  That's $180/year ($60/year X 3) instead of the $99/year for 4 family accounts.

 

So it looks like MS is pushing us to get XBox Ones in order to save money on Gold Live... which is fine if all that we have is an Xbox One, but if we have either 2 Xbox Ones or an Xbox One and a 360 we are looking at $120 for 2 gold memberships as oppose to $99 for 4 gold memberships.

 

This really isn't that great IMO.  Looks like if the kids want to play their games online with their friends they are going to have to be paying out of their own allowance savings or ask for it for Christmas.

 

You really should look for deals on 12month Gold cards, lots of people can get it for $35, very few pay the full $60 price for a years worth.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

You really should look for deals on 12month Gold cards, lots of people can get it for $35, very few pay the full $60 price for a years worth.

 

Even if you get deals it's not great though, even worse when PS+ is cheaper off the mark. And what happens when they release LE consoles or an eventual Slim model? We can't transfer the XBL Gold to the hardware ID of those and you're going to be limited? :no:(N)

 

Can't imagine the reaction is going to be favourable for the press either who use the same profiles in the office as at home. Developers don't have to worry about it at least.

[George P Global Moderator]

Even if you get deals it's not great though, even worse when PS+ is cheaper off the mark. And what happens when they release LE consoles or an eventual Slim model? We can't transfer the XBL Gold to the hardware ID of those and you're going to be limited? :no: (N)

 

Can't imagine the reaction is going to be favourable for the press either who use the same profiles in the office as at home. Developers don't have to worry about it at least.

 

I think it's too soon to say that, we don't know if you can't move your main/home account to a new XB1.   I bet you could though, it'd be like transferring content from one HDD to a new one, probably via one of the USB3 ports and so on.  Also probably a one way trip, transfer to a new XB1 and then you can't move it again for at least a year or something.    The 360 has/had the same policy for moving content to a new HDD iirc.

 

Or it could just as well be a cloud based option, since things are also up on the cloud as far as your account/saves and list of digital content you can re-d/l.   So, just go through some menu option to "transfer your home account to a new XB1" and you're done.    Or maybe it'll be as easy as logging in and just selecting this XB1 as your "main/home" system which would then stop the other one from being the main, again, probably with some type of limits on how often you can do it.

[spenser.d]

Home Gold is restricted to 1 Xbox One

 

 

http://www.shopto.net/news/43672/Home-Gold-confined-to-one-console;-MS-confirms-points-replaced-with-cash/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

 

Le's just hope they have a transfer tool in place when X1's break / die (N).

 

As for Family Packs, this is old news. They stopped selling/renewing them in March IIRC. Really **** news for 360 owners (N)

 

I'm betting it'll be pretty easy to specify a console as your 'Home' console and switch it if necessary. Doubt it has anything to do with transferring and more just specifying it when you download your profile to another console.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

I think it's too soon to say that, we don't know if you can't move your main/home account to a new XB1.   I bet you could though, it'd be like transferring content from one HDD to a new one, probably via one of the USB3 ports and so on.  Also probably a one way trip, transfer to a new XB1 and then you can't move it again for at least a year or something.    The 360 has/had the same policy for moving content to a new HDD iirc.

 

Or it could just as well be a cloud based option, since things are also up on the cloud as far as your account/saves and list of digital content you can re-d/l.   So, just go through some menu option to "transfer your home account to a new XB1" and you're done.    Or maybe it'll be as easy as logging in and just selecting this XB1 as your "main/home" system which would then stop the other one from being the main, again, probably with some type of limits on how often you can do it.

 

I hope it's a little more relaxed than 1 year. They used to have 1 year license transfer limits on the 360 but I think it's down to 3 months now. Same goes for when you switch XBL regions iirc. It really shouldn't be hard to implement a user friendly option. What happens when a console breaks etc or like I said, own multiple X1s.

 

At some point MS will put a road block on it because otherwise their XBL Gold sales are going to suffer.

 

I'm betting it'll be pretty easy to specify a console as your 'Home' console and switch it if necessary. Doubt it has anything to do with transferring and more just specifying it when you download your profile to another console.

 

I hope so.

[Shadrack]

You really should look for deals on 12month Gold cards, lots of people can get it for $35, very few pay the full $60 price for a years worth.

 

I do shop around but I'm comparing retail to retail here.  $99/year for family pack w/ 4 pack of Gold Live Accounts MSRP vs $60/year for 1 gold live account MSRP.

 

I know there are cheaper places to find Gold membership cards, but its hard to compare something that will fluctuate in price.  I honestly haven't seen them for less than $45 from someone that looked legit last I looked which was over a year ago.