Xbox begins testing a family plan on Game Pass Ultimate for 5 players

5 Aug. (Portaltic/EP) –

microsoft has started testing a new family plan for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in Colombia and Ireland, which allows the user to share the benefits of the subscription with up to four other people residing in the same country.

Xbox currently offers three levels of Game Pass subscription: for console, for PC and Ultimate, which combines all the advantages of the previous two, with features such as access to EA Play and hundreds of games, including those from Xbox Game Studios from the day of its launch.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate also offers other additional benefits, such as access to Xbox Live Gold, which allows you to play ‘online’. Until now, this subscription level only supported individual plans. However, Microsoft has been weighing a family one since December 2020, of which more details were known in April of this year.

So Windows Central anticipated that this new plan would provide access for up to five members, who could play together using a single subscription managed by a central account holder.

Now, the company has begun testing this new subscription modality for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in Colombia and Ireland, as explained in a statement posted on its website.

In this writing, in addition to confirming that the plan allows up to five players, Microsoft has pointed out that all participants in it must reside in the same country as the primary account holder.

To access this initiative, the primary user must be enrolled in the tester program Xbox Insider, which gives access to the latest Xbox updates before they reach end users with an official version.

Microsoft has also detailed the operation of the conversion of the remaining subscription time according to the membership fee and in case of joining this plan as a member of Game Pass. Thus, a full month of Game Pass Ultimate will become 18 days of subscription to the new family plan.

The Redmond company has ensured that no monetary value is lost with this conversion and that the main user of the family plan will have to wait for this subscription to expire if they want to resume their individual membership.

The rest of the members of the family plan, however, will not be able to access the conversion. However, before joining the new Game Pass Ultimate membership, they can decide whether to cancel their individual subscription or wait for it to end.

All members must also have a Microsoft account to participate in this test. For now, members of Xbox AllAccessthe service that allows you to buy an Xbox console in installments and access 24 months of Game Pass Ultimate, cannot access this test.

The company has not specified if it plans to implement this option in other countries to test it with more users, nor what could be the official date of arrival of this new family plan for all Xbox players.