June 22nd 2010 3:51 pm PT

A lot of questions about this but two right off the bat…

a.)If your household has more than one xbox, can you have more then one person logged in at the same time?
b.) How does netflix work? Does the primary account holder need to be logged in or can any member be logged in?

How about scrapping that terrible Wii copy Kinect that was the total laughing stock of E3, and just make LIVE free like it is on the PS3.

How does this work with existing accounts? Can they be merged into a family account? How about multiple consoles?

Will give this a look when it comes out. Can you use it monitor silver accounts also? In my case with 4 boys, I only have the older two with gold accounts and myself.

It would be really nice is if the standard Gold subscription covered two accounts and the Family Gold covered 4 or 5.

The Family Gold doesn’t really help my situation where there are just two of us. I am an avid gamer and my wife plays 360 VERY occasionally. Sure, she’d like to occasionally play Puzzle Quest or Poker Smash online, but for the little she does plays, she doesn’t feel it’s worth spending the money for a second Gold account.

Another question that pops into my head
1)Do they have to be on the same xbox? I was thinking about doing this for my daughter who lives with her mother.

would it be available only in the US?

This actually sounds pretty awesome!

I’ll round up the questions and get them answered. Look for a healthy discussion about this on a future show.

@AI Kago

Did you see the Kinect stuff? How can it be copying the Wii when it has no controller? The Move is a copy of the Wii. At least MS seems to be innovating with motion controled games.

Kinect looks awesome to me. My kids would love it. I just can’t stomach the rumored price point.

@Ai Kago…well for one Kinect is revolutionary AND optional. If you don’t want it then don’t buy it. Secondly, if LIVE was free is would be just as bad as it is on PS3. You pay for LIVE to maintain an amazing service that tops the charts in quality. And didn’t I hear Sony announce a “gold” online membership?

Will this be available in all Xbox Live regions or only in the US(as usual)?

This is my one and only complaint against xbox … should be one gold subscription per household

My big question (if terms of me using this) is will I be able to use this on different xbox’s in different cities. My parents want to get kinect (already have an xbox for media center) but no gold subscription atm. I have 2 brothers in different cities as well which would be nice if I could tie them all into one subscription so they don’t have to worry about resubscribing each year.

Excellent! This’ll definitely save me some $$$ with the wife and kids.

Heh, same questions as Skunkslayer and Lucapiu. Do the accounts have to be on the same console, and can Canadians get in on this yet?

Two big questions:

1> Can you explain the Activity Monitoring? Will we be able to see how much time we have spent in each game? Or is it just for things like purchases and such?

2> Will this be sold to retail or only available through the 360? I ask, because while it’s a good deal in principle, it becomes less than that when you consider that you can get a $50 subscription for $30 if you shop around before you need to renew. While that would still be a better deal (Assuming you need exactly 4 memberships), having deals out there for family packs would make it even better.

And then a smaller less important question:

3> Anything to enforce that this is only with family, and not with for instance, friends? I assume it’s just a matter of whether or not you trust your friends to be in charge of your account.

@Ai Kago
I did not see anyone at E3 laughing at the Kinect, rather it looked like everyone was enjoying it.

usa only?

So this is certainly interesting.

1) Can existing paid gold accounts be merged, and will I receive any credit. This is especially a problem as gold accounts were bought at different times.
2) Will content bought by different family members be merged into family account
3) How will content managed by EA, RockStar, etc be managed, will all family members have access to all DLC
4) Can multiple family members be logged onto multiple devices (I recently discovered that I can only be logged onto to either a pc or xbox), which really screwed me up considering family wanted to watch Netflix and I was playing Project S.
5) What about families with 3 kids ?
6) Will Avatar clothes be shareable ?

If this is done right it will be awesome, but I’m only paying on average 30$ for each 12 month live card currently, so this will need to be super flexible (within a single household) to be useful.

“Laughingstock”? Funny, but Kinect was getting raves from major outlets and gaming sites. I was at E3, and by the third day, there were lines twice around the block to try Kinect. Dance Central at Harmonix’s booth was extremely popular.

I even shot a video of booth babes rocking out to Lady Gaga on it on my site:

http://www.gamestooge.com/2010/06/19/e3-10-booth-babes-rocking-to-dance-central/

So, no, it’s not a laughingstock – only to people who never actually tried it.

I have three Xboxes one for my son and daughter in there bedrooms the other is conneceted to the main TV in house for myself and my wife will this apply to all of them.

How about a family pack for those of us that are husband and wife? Not going to get two Gold at double price, but might get another for a little more than one.

This is great, but it’s sort of weird that you would limit it to 4 accounts. Many families have 5 members.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to instead make the plan apply to all accounts on one specific console (the family Xbox)? That would both stop you from alienating families of 5 or more and stop people from creating fake “families” with their friends to take advantage of the cheaper price.

I have been hoping for something like this for a long time. More specifics would be useful. Although they have already been mentioned, I am interested to know whether current accounts can be rolled into the family account, as well as how DLC and multiple consoles will be handled. Great news!

Major-why have Microsoft suddenly started to get cold feet with MMOs for the 360…i hear that FF14 isn’t happening on the 360 because MS doesn’t want us playing with PS3 players and they don’t want Silver players to play online anymore…it didn’t stop FF11,we played with PC and PS2 players and you only needed silver(although i had gold)
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Microsoft are starting to become the product of their own downfall here with their rules and regulations…imagine if they stopped The Old Republic coming to the 360!!!!

Great move! My biggest questions is how will this work with multiple consoles?
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I’m planning on replacing my Uverse set top boxes with Xbox 360′s when that software update is enabled. The thought of a combination Netflix, Last.fm, DVD player, network media player, AND Uverse all-in-one Xbox is very exciting.
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I want to be able to easily log into a console using any one of my family accounts and not have to worry about which Xbox it lives on – or having to move around USB sticks with the account on it. Just log in and go.

How will policy enforcement work? If action is taken against the main account holder, does that affect the other Family members? If action is taken against one of the Family members, does this reflect on the main account holder? Are notifications sent to the main account holder?

Thanks,
John Catuira
http://www.theMarriedGamers.net

I’ll add my voice to the ones that have already asked similar questions…

I have 3 360s and 3 gold accounts within my household. Can I merge these all under one family account? Do all of the current gold subscriptions need to expire before merging them all under one family account? If one account has purchase power, does that allow me to distribute licenses to other accounts/systems?

This is something I have been waiting for. Managing several tags across several systems and the DRM associated with each is a bit ridiculous. I should be able to buy maps or DLC for one tag that gets shared within the same house. I can buy a game once, and share that game within the house, but I can’t do the same for DLC? Don’t get me started on the VIP/Cerberus codes…

A W E S O M E !

All I need to know is can my kids’ existing accounts (Gamertags, credits etc) be merged into the family pack?

Maybe when my kids are older.

$99 is a little steep if you only want to add 1 secondary account to your gold membership.

The pricing scheme should be scale based on how many accounts you want to add.

I think this membership will be related to 4 gamertags running on the same machine. Imagine situation if you could have 4 gamertags running on a different machines in the same house. Microsoft wouldn’t allowed that because it would mean that 4 friends (not a family members) could take advantage of the system.

In general I think it’s a good initiative from Microsoft. But I would also expect 25% discount if we have only two gamertags in a family. Comparing to 50% discount for 4 members it would make sense.

Have a nice day!!!

I have my daughter, wife and myself on individual plans. What I would like to know will there be provision for rolling our IDs into the Family Plan. If so will there be a cred or extension of the family plan based on how many months are left but of course I am probably the nth person to ask this. Major there needs to be an extensive FAQ. Also has there been an official kinect pricing announcement because SEVERAL blogs are reporting it.

JJZ

Great plans.

Too bad it’s no use for me yet. Two separate Gold accounts cost about €70.

And to the people asking about if this is US only: I read the Press announcement and the parental features say that they will be internationally usable. So I assume this family gold sub is also.

Great news. Since I have 4 in the family. Just hope this somehow applies to the DRM issues with DLC and Arcade games too. I have multiple consoles and the managing of downloads/maps packs is a nightmare. Not to mention a rip off when I have to pay for it multiple times. Curse you Activision and your $15 maps.

Q. If one of the sub accounts gets banned from Xbox LIVE, do any of the others get banned?

So, say a child does something which they weren’t supposed to do, which ends up being a ban-worthy offense, will all accounts be affected or will just the one.

What if the primary account holder gets banned, what happens then?

To Echo, it’d be very nice if you guys could give us simple married no kids people some option other than buying 2 gold subscriptions. Can this be split across multiple households? Does only the primary account have the ability to buy points? That might make it worth it (team up with a friend of mine and we each get gold for us and our wife/girlfriend.

Kind of nice. Don’t have a use for it yet.

How about a movie pack/subscription/season pass sort of thing for movies and TV that makes it more affordable…like Netflix affordable.

This sounds pretty good. I have 5 in the family, what are my options? Can we register multiple xboxes to a household as well as gold accounts? I hate having to take a thumbdrive out and cart it upstairs everytime I want to watch or do something elsewhere, VERY annoying. It never fails that the thumbdrive is not where I am at the moment. PLEASE?

Throw my hat into the ring for “large family support”. Family of six here.

I really like the “title exception” feature — I’ve been hoping that for a long time (I’ve always thought Halo was a lot more comparable to a lot of “T” games, and it’ll probably be the first “M” game I let my boys play). Question: does it go both ways? There are a couple “T” games that I’m not as comfortable with my kids playing, that I’d rather *exclude* (without excluding *all* “T” games).

I really believe that xbox live should be charged per console, not profile.
If I was a parent, and bought my kids an Xbox, and then found out that I had to pay for a separate Live account for each of them if they wanted to play online, I would be quite upset.

What about the DRM?, I hope that with this promotion you give the chance to download the content on 4 consoles and playing without any issues.
Looking forward for some answers Major.

How about we can register the people that live at the address, and the serials of the xboxes at that address, and then the family can play on those without a bunch of drm crap and thumbdrives?
They could determine the address by the credit card billing address to stop people trying to game the system by signing up friends and such. Something like this would be wonderful.

But that encourages more children to play online, and I don’t like that.

I think it’s fantastic.

As someone with a houseful of kids who are constantly wanting to go online with my Gold account, I not can sort them out through a family pack – keeping control over subscriptions etc on my main account.

This way they won’t mess up my MW2 stats

I would assume it is the $149 for the Kinect that the blogs have been reporting since that’s what it’s showing in the Microsoft Store: http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Kinect-Sensor-for-Xbox-360/product/C737B081

hopefully the dispensation of MS Points to family members means we’ll be able to gift points and/or games to friends in the near future.

i think the Family Pack is a great idea but, i’m going to reserve my full approval until major discusses all the specifics on his show.

also, to those ranting about Kinect’s rumored price point, remember the following:
Sony’s Move Bundle (Eyetoy + Wand): $99.99
Nunchuck for Wand: $29.99
Total: $130.00 (for 1 player)
Extra Players: $50 (wand only) – $80 (wand + nunchuck)
Sony Move minimum for 2 players: $180 (w/nunchuck, $210)

Kinect’s rumored price point: $150 (with at least 2 – 4 player support)

Kinect is definitely the better deal.

Will this be available in Canada as well?

Any thoughts on reconciling the price difference between the cost for gold memberships between Canada the US given that the currencies are very nearly at par?

Shows you how greedy MS is. Everything I’ve seen lets you get a cheaper price for adding more things. Such as on Ebay you buy two items from the same seller and get a discount. Or another site I was at with accounts it was $10 an account OR $15 for two.

Typical MS. Probably why next gen I am sticking with Sony. More so to because after hearing Kinetic probably will be around $150 I gave up on it. I want it but its not worth $150. >.>

All I want to know if you be able to track and lock out that second user account from purchasing anything with that main user approval?

I think it’s ridiculous that MS expects us to pay for multiple Gold accounts on a single console in the first place! Gold membership should apply to the console, not individual accounts. This is just another cash cow in Microsoft’s stable.

My gold account is paid through sometime in 2012. If I get a family pack for myself and 2 family members will my prepaid time be extended or just wasted?

My son and I have separate XBox Live accounts on two different consoles in our house… I, too, would like to find out if they can be merged. Although I tend to buy my renewals from Amazon when they sell them for $30 every now and then,it MIGHT be worth something to hook up my wife and daughter as well, but they play so seldom, I don’t know if it is worth the $40 increase over what we normally pay for the two of us per year…

Good idea, but still too pricey perhaps.

Also, when does that ESPN deal kick in? Dish Network and Disney are fighting and they just turned off the HD feeds of ABC Family, ESPNNews, and the Disney HD channels (ESPN and ESPN2 still on in HD….. I’m wondering if the ESPN and ESPN 2 content is next and want to have a backup ..I’m assuming the coming XBox ESPN content will be HD Quality)

Also, more importantly….. Will content purchased on one console by one family member, be automatically authorized for the other family member on a second console… this might sweeten the deal enough to justify paying the extra amount vs. the discount we can usually get (buy.com had it for $34 yesterday… don’t know if it is still there)

This is something that I will look foward too, especially the dispensing of Micrsoft Points. I don’t want to purchase any games with my daughter’s account, because of license issues ( I have to transfer South Park). The family pack will be good, for my daughter, stepson, my husband, and especially myself ( I game the most). Plus my account finishes on November so this will come in handy.

All of my questions have been asked already. I’m really eager to see if this will be available to everyone, instead of just the US.

So if I had the primary account, I could have it setup so that none of the accounts under mine would be able to buy DLC unless I authorized it, right?

Also, I’d be able to “gift” points to the subaccounts? Sounds perfect for me and my friends. It would save them money and they couldn’t rack up a huge DLC bill on my tab…they could pay for what ever points they wanted to use and I could send them points as they pay.

Sounds like an awesome way for a family or a small close group of people to share the expense of Live. Very cool, Microsoft… now don’t jack it up ;?)

I forgot to mention, the family setting for indiviual members is something that I have been waiting for, never blocked my system because of myself. November is a long wait, but if we waited for the Facebook, Twitter, Zune thing, which I still say that you should add people on facebook like you do a friend request. Oh well, I hope it’s something that they consider before November.

For this to work, we need shared DLC across family members. I want my family members to have access to all purchases I have made. Even purchases before the upgrade. If it could merge all purchases by all accounts into one, that would be great. Also, we need a better way of sharing DLC licenses to all consoles owned by the main account holder. I want to be able to play games like battlefield 1943 with my son, without having to purchase it twice or worry about which account purchased it or which console it was downloaded on first.

Awesome ! not my case (yet) but I know for sure lots of people were asking for something like that

@RuairiAU Great point RuairiAU.
An example:
I try to let my daughter play Fable 2 on our 2nd console. I’ve downloaded all the DLC to that console. It works fine for me. But of course it doesn’t work for her because I purchased the DLC on our first console with my account. Argh!

What if you are family without kids?! For a husband and wife couple, this is no discount at all. Why not call this the LIVE Child pack? It is still much cheaper for a family of 2 to buy 12 month LIVE cards on eBay.

This is good for me and my daughter, I can pass MSP that I haven’t used to her account so she can get some avatar items. I am planning on connecting accounts with my twin and her daughter so this will be good for me as well. I was wondering if there could be 1 primary and a secondary account that could manage billing as well as my sis like to share our credit cards.

Can this only be done on one Xbox or do you just need to connect the profiles?

Great idea. As long as it works on multiple consoles. Having to pay for so many Gold memberships in 1 house is why my kids have to share a 360, and an account. I spend alot on our hobby of gaming. But i find it hard to justify spending $200 a year just to allow my kids to play online. If this spans multiple 360s, the number of 360s and 360 games in my house would double instantly.

This is a great idea! Most of my questions have been asked by others already, but I have another:

How easy will it be to change which Gamertags are included in the family membership?

Say, for example, my eldest son gets kicked out of home (as all (most?) kids eventually do), can we easily remove him from the Family, and get him to buy his own separate Gold, and still have him keep stuff he’s purchased while under the Family?

Similarly, if a new addition to the family comes along, is it easy to create them a Gamertag and add them to an existing Family membership?

Soo Kinect is now listed on the Microsoft store for 150 bucks? I thought the whole point of taking the processing unit out of it and handing that off to the 360 was to bring the costs down? 150 bucks, seriously? Forget about it. I won’t pay any more than 100 bucks, sorry but until the price comes down to a reasonable cost, i’m not going to spend almost an entire consoles worth of money on an unproven accessory, not gonna happen.

@sho220
You can get them in a bundlepack with the Move Wand, Subcontroller, an Eyetoy and a Demo for much less than Kinect, so unless you already have an eyetoy and like exposing yourself to children online, Move is cheaper as a set.
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Seriously though there should be less kids online, not more.

I too am going to wait till the Kinect goes to a lower price (I have thought thoroughly about this), if it fails then I won’t feel regret for spending $150. I know there will be people there on day 1 but from the looks of it not a lot of people are JUMPING IN to this “new innovative technology”.

Is this definately coming to the UK too?

And as for those people already slamming Kinect before it’s even released, are you for real?

My small children will love this. If the software support is there and indie developers can get their hands on it, it will be huge. It’ll certainly stop those low-resolution Wii-tards from bleating on about their toy and the 370th re-incarnation of Mario.

“And as for those people already slamming Kinect before it’s even released, are you for real?”

Yep. They haven’t shown anything to justify the price tag, IMO. I have already decided to pick up Playstation Move though.

A valiant effort but still a failure to me. I do not want a family account, I want a CONSOLE account. Basically, Gold assigned to my consoles serial number so ANYONE signed in on that console logs in as a Gold account.

I have several friends who do not have Gold, quite frankly they do not even have an Internet connection at home except perhaps on their mobile phones, so it makes no sense to buy a Gold account. However they would like to be able to use Gold features when logged in on my console connected to broadband.

Even a 1 month account is expensive if they only use it at best 1 week out of that month. I would happily lose the ability to use my Gold account anywhere if it meant I could assign it to my console instead allowing my friends to use Gold features when logged in on it.

Does Microsoft really think that the new casual crowd is going to be interested in paying so much to get online? I don’t think so. “Casual” also comes along with “budget” as well as “family.” $50 for a single membership or $100 for a family of 4 membership is still going to be unattractive to the “casual” crowd that Kinect is trying to draw in.

I believe it is time for a tiered XBL subscription service.

Tier 1: [Bronze Level] – FREE – Online Multiplayer, Access to the Marketplace, Friends List Capacity of 25 friends

Tier 2: [Silver Level] – $15/year – Bronze Level Benefits, Friends List Capacity of 50 friends, Access to Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and whatever free service MS wants to charge for.

Tier 3: [Gold Level] – $25/year – Silver Level Benefits, Friends List capacity of 100 friends, Access to 1vs100, Free avatar and in-game items once a month

Tier 4: [Platinum Level] – $50/year – Gold Level Benefits, Friends List capacity of 500 friends, Access to ESPN channel, Free XBLA game every month for as long as your subscription is valid, 50 Free MS points every month, Access to Clans and Clan Parties, Dedicated Hosting Servers, Live Video Chat during gameplay

– Of course the benefits and levels can be played around with, but there’s an example. MS doesn’t offer much choice when it comes to accessing their network and they restrict those who do not pay from getting into online multiplayer, which is where they earn most of their sales on DLC. Seems to me that MS is getting to the point where they need a Tiered structure. Of course, I’ve been rooting for this for quite a while now…

Your tiered Memberships idea sounds the biggest bollocks I’ve ever read. The only ay to fix it is to completly destroy it. MS would NEVER give anything for free, ever, except free dlc.

@chiruno99 Why do people get stuck so hard on the FREE STUFF concept? Ignore those items that bother you and just think about the idea of offering different levels of service.

BTW – The Playstation Plus service provides free stuff. Sony has figured something out. This isn’t were I got the idea, but it shows that it’s not a crazy concept.

They tired to do tier level membershiups before a long time ago here there was something before Silver, but they scrapped it and went to Silver and Gold. It’s easier with the wto levels anyway: cheapskates who should fork out for oodies and Customers that get the stuff.

And don’t bring PSN plus into this either.

And as for those people already slamming Kinect before it’s even released, are you for real?

@diablo1967 -
Hey, I’m one of those who would love Kinect in my living room, but there is quite a few things I bought from Microsoft that have become obsolete/worthless/useless and I don’t want the same thing happening again on a $150 piece of merchandise. Its a 3D motion cam with a mic and can control my dashboard whenever I feel lazy but I don’t want it collecting dust if in the future it is ever forgotten.

I like to think ahead and sometimes I can be very impulsive and that ends up biting me in the ass which I don’t want to happen here. So I will listen to what my gut is telling me and its telling me to wait a while to see the outcome of Kinect in the homes then I will JUMP IN along with the others.

@chiruno99 it’s always been Silver and Gold since the launch of Xbox 360. Maybe there were discussions, but when Xbox 360 hit the market this is the way it was.

You don’t have any reasonable argument against my idea except that you think that Silver members are “cheapskates who should fork out for oodies”. Choose a four-letter word and shove it somewhere dark and cold. I would “fork out” if Microsoft gave me a choice that was more suitable for my needs. If I could pay for online multiplayer only, I would. But Microsoft doesn’t offer me that choice. So, you think I’m a cheapskate because I refuse to pay for services I’ll never use. I say I’m an intelligent shopper.

I can, will, and did bring PSN into this because it’s in direct competition with Xbox Live.

@RidinSlow
I’ll but Fish in your freezer. Sorry but I read through that and I can’t help but laugh.
“Choose a four-letter word and shove it somewhere dark and cold.”
Put it this way, you don’t pay for gold, you don’t get discounts. Miscosoft don’t see you as a loyal customer. That’s the facts.
If you love PSN so much then go on it, I have both and they’re both full of kids and dicks alike.

Rofl

So.. RidinSlow just put your previous ‘fact’ to bed, so you ignore that and focus on the more humorous side of his post. Then you post that “you don’t pay for gold, you don’t get discounts” which, while generally true, you just happen to post the day after the Sonic 19th anniversary offers were presented to both Gold AND Silver members.

Then you go on to say “If you love PSN so much then go on it” which is awfully similar to immature playground retorts. Then when I thought it couldn’t get better you pull out the punchline “I have both and they’re both full of kids and dicks alike”

Indeed… common denominator comes to mind…

GG

Can DLC (most prevalently FPS Maps, but also add-on missions, etc) be made available to the whole family instead of just one account?

I only have to buy one copy of a game for my family to share… but when it comes to DLC, I have to pay for it several times over if each person wants to play it on their own account…