No More XBOX Live Gold Family Pack!

[TheOsburnFamil]

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/billing-a ... member-faq

I'm still unclear what this means exactly after the current subscription runs out. Considering I have a house full of xbox360's just for extenders and the various mediastreaming services (we don't game in our house)... If I will be forced to start buying individual subscriptions-- there goes the Xboxes.

[Shackleford]

From what I've read it sounds like each console will need a live gold subscription.

**Home Gold benefits limited to a single, designated Xbox One console in Gold member’s home; restrictions apply. Some Gold benefits cannot be shared; features and requirements subject to change. See http://www.xbox.com/live.

[foxwood]

From what I've read it sounds like each console will need a live gold subscription.

**Home Gold benefits limited to a single, designated Xbox One console in Gold member’s home; restrictions apply. Some Gold benefits cannot be shared; features and requirements subject to change. See http://www.xbox.com/live.

As far as I can see, Home Gold only applies to the XBone.

This could be good news for Ceton, if they actually had a working Extender, with a free Netflix client that worked.

[Shackleford]

Ya the home Gold stuff is Xbox One, but what I've been reading (nothing seems to confirm it) is that the gold account is going to be tied to the hardware and not just the gamertag. From http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/ ... -august-27

Unfortunately, this means families with numerous Xbox 360 consoles in their home will need to pay for separate Gold memberships starting later this month, as opposed to the cheaper bundled price of the Family Pack. The alternative is to take advantage of Xbox One's new Home Gold features.

[choliscott]

When does your subscription end? I know they stopped the family plan back in March/April timeframe, but I believe if you allow it to auto renew (at the retail rate), then I believe you can renew the family plan & stay grandfathered. If you don't renew, then you no longer have the family plan.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/billing-a ... member-faq

I'm still unclear what this means exactly after the current subscription runs out. Considering I have a house full of xbox360's just for extenders and the various mediastreaming services (we don't game in our house)... If I will be forced to start buying individual subscriptions-- there goes the Xboxes.

[TheOsburnFamil]

The thing is, my auto-renewal for my family pack ($99.99 US) just hit my paypal account yesterday. According to the email, the conversion will automatically convert any member of the gold family to an individual gold, plus add 3 months. It also states that the new gold home is for the XB1 only-- however, it says the conversion is mandatory & automatic.

So from the way I read this-- given my account JUST renewed yesterday, and I'm getting 3 months "bonus", it sounds like I have the next 15 months worth of xbox live gold for four of my xbox live accounts. Afterwhich, all of them would be required to renew as individuals...

Thus... in 15 months, I'll be saying goodbye to xboxlive gold, converting all my xbox360s to just boot to the mediacenter interface only, and then buying a bunch of cheep roku devices for Netflix & hbogo. That is, unless CETON can finally produce a working MediaCenter ECHO that has the Android experience with Netflix & HBOGo. In which case, all my xbox360s (5 now in total) will go up on ebay.

[bartman01]

Ya the home Gold stuff is Xbox One, but what I've been reading (nothing seems to confirm it) is that the gold account is going to be tied to the hardware and not just the gamertag. From http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/ ... -august-27

Unfortunately, this means families with numerous Xbox 360 consoles in their home will need to pay for separate Gold memberships starting later this month, as opposed to the cheaper bundled price of the Family Pack. The alternative is to take advantage of Xbox One's new Home Gold features.

The official announcement indicates that 'Home Gold' only applys to a single designated XBox One. If you have multiple XBox One's, each needs it own 'Gold' account to take advantage of all of the gold features. I guess the work around would be to log in to the second box with the 'gold' account and that would allow both to use the gold features.

Good news is that it sounds like the gamertag may be able to be on both the XBox 360 and the One at the same time so that might be another work around to getting 'gold only' features on multiple screens at the same time. I guess MS feels that if you can afford 2+ boxes, you can afford 2+ gold accounts.

[adam1991]

So yet again we don't *know* anything. XBox or XBox One? Tied to hardware or tied to gamertag?

I would love to know some actual facts about this...

[bartman01]

So yet again we don't *know* anything. XBox or XBox One? Tied to hardware or tied to gamertag?

I would love to know some actual facts about this...

The problem is that 'home gold' was integral to the original DRM requirements. Now that MS is seemingly changing EVERYTHING on the fly (no more checking in, console will work fine now with Kinect unplugged), the situation is pretty fluid. As it stands right now (per official statements from MS):
Home Gold is tied to your primary XBox One.
You can be logged in to both your primary XBox One and a regular XBox 360 at the same time with your gold account.

So if you have 3 gamer tags on your XBox One (A, B, and C where A is the only 'gold' user), they all inherit Gold status on that box. If you log in to another box with B or C, it will not have Gold status on that second box.

Keep in mind that at any point between now and launch, MS could very well change it all again.