What was a rumor a few months ago is now official: Microsoft is indeed testing a new formula for its famous Xbox Game Pass. This is a new type of subscription, family, allowing up to 5 people to benefit from the same account, for an adapted price of €21.99 compared to €12.99 for the classic price of Xbox Game Pass. Launched barely 24 hours ago in Ireland and Colombia, this “large family” formula only concerns Xbox Insiders members. There are still some restrictions to take advantage of this offer: that the other guest accounts are not already subscribed to the Xbox Game Pass subscription and that they reside in the same country as you. It is therefore not possible to share your account with a cousin or an uncle who stayed in the village, for example, so to speak. Just to be clear, Microsoft has shared some important details about this new family formula, which we have carefully translated for you:
Joining the Game Pass Insider Preview will convert the remaining time on your subscription to time in the new plan, based on the monetary value of the old subscription. For example, a full month of Ultimate will convert to 18 days of subscription for that plan. This way you won’t lose any of the remaining value of your existing subscription upon conversion. The conversion is final and users must wait until their new subscription expires before switching back to a previous subscription.
Conversion is not available for invited group members. Before joining a group, a group member can cancel their existing subscription or wait for it to expire. If they don’t have a Microsoft account, invited friends and family will need to create a new Microsoft account and sign in to participate.
Members with Xbox All Access will not be able to participate in this preview.
In Colombia, some parts of the preview copy have not been localized and may be displayed in English.
Known issues:
Invited members with an existing subscription may experience an error when accepting an invitation. We strive to allow these members to cancel immediately to accept the invitation.
Attempts to upgrade twice within 24 hours will be blocked. For example, upgrading from Xbox Live Gold to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will work, but attempts to upgrade from Ultimate to Xbox Game Pass Insider Preview will be blocked for 24 hours. There is currently a generic error code displayed when this is attempted.
Microsoft account family members will not receive an email when they are automatically added to a group. Primary account holders can automatically share benefits with members of the Microsoft account family. We’re working on sending a confirmation email, and family members don’t need to explicitly accept an invitation to access it.
A primary account holder may see a “Something went wrong” error when trying to share directly with two or more Microsoft account family members at once after purchase. Please wait a few moments and try again. You can also try sharing via email or link.
Error when trying to purchase the Xbox Game Pass Insider Preview package. If you’re stuck buying with this error code: PEX-CatalogAvailabilityDataNotFound, please report an issue by following the steps in the Insider subreddit here. You may be able to work around this issue by restarting the Microsoft Store and trying to purchase again.
Group invitation and management emails are currently only in English. We are working on additional languages for these emails.