Following its original pilot in Ireland and Columbia last year, Microsoft is now making its Friends & Family plan for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate available in six more nations. With the Friends & Family plan, Xbox Game Pass subscribers can split advantages with up to four additional friends or family members in New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Hungary, Israel, and Sweden.
With a Friends & Family membership, each person has exclusive access to EA Play, the full Game Pass Ultimate library on Xbox and PC, as well as other perks like member-only discounts. Microsoft has not made pricing information available to the public for each new location. However, to put things in perspective, the plan is currently offered in Ireland for €21.99 per month (roughly $23) as opposed to the usual price of €12.99 per month ($14.99) for a normal Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. For each individual to share all the regular Xbox Game Pass Ultimate benefits, that comes out to be less than €5 per month.
But there are some restrictions to joining. First, only individuals who reside in the same nation as the account holder may exchange Friends & Family memberships. Second, the remaining time in your membership is converted based on its monetary worth if you already have an Ultimate subscription and switch to a Friends & Family one. As an illustration, if you still have a complete month of Ultimate, you will receive 18 days of Friends & Family. The four guests who are asked to join a Friends & Family plan cannot convert, so they must cancel their individual memberships before joining a shared account. Microsoft adds that subscribers to Xbox All Access are ineligible to take part in Friends & Family programs.
The availability of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Friends & Family package in other countries, such as the US, the UK, or Canada, is still unknown. However, based on the plan’s current cost, when it does come to the US, it’s likely to be around $25 per month, which is a complete bargain if shared by five individuals. The decision by Microsoft to launch a user-shareable subscription at a reasonable price contrasts with Netflix’s attempts to restrict password sharing. Password sharing costs the streaming giant an estimated $6 billion in lost income annually, and recent attempts to stop it haven’t exactly been well received by users.
