Gamepass Friends & Family News: Could Launch at Xbox Developer Direct

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We’ve got the latest news about the Gamepass Friends and Family, and there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing much more sooner than later.

Gamepass Friends and Family will allow up to 4 accounts (group members) to join a 5th (primary member) and have access to all Gamepass Ultimate features, including Xbox Live and access to Gamepass games on Xbox consoles, PC and Cloud gaming. You won’t even need to live together, as long as all group members are in the same country.

You can see the full details, as well as a comprehensive FAQ by viewing the Irish version of the website (where Friends and Family has been trialled since last autumn/fall).

https://www.xbox.com/en-IE/xbox-game-pass/friends-and-family

Here’s a lowdown of the main features.

5 accounts to share with all the benefits of Ultimate
Play hundreds of high-quality games on console, PC and cloud
Greatest community of gamers on the most advanced multiplayer network
New games added all the time
Xbox Game Studios titles the same day as release
EA Play membership included
Exclusive member discounts and deals
Free Perks including in-game content and partner offers

The pricing is still uncertain, currently it’s €21.99, which would roughly translate to about £19.99 or $23.99
Rumours of a $25 price point have done their rounds, but with some people expecting a gamepass increase at some point in the future, it wouldn’t surprise me if prices ended up at £22 (the price of 2 standard Gamepass Ultimate Subs)..

So why did we mention Xbox Developer Direct on the 25th…
No, it wasn’t a shameless clickbait, we have good reason to believe that the Developer Direct Showcase will also announce the next stage of “Gamepass Friends and Family”, first mentioned to me by an unnamed source before the showcase was confirmed by Microsoft, but that sounds more likely when today (after months of “doing nothing”, the Friends and Family website has today been updated for US users.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/xbox-game-pass-friends-family/CFQ7TTC0HXBN

It doesn’t tell us much, but the title is “Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family — Xbox Game Pass — Test – 1 Month”
which points at final testing before release or preparation of another stage of testing in more areas (The United States).
Sadly there’s no change on the en-gb (UK) websites which, like most countries act like nobody even whispered Friends & Family, but we wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see more localised websites updated over the next week, ahead of a more final announcement at Developer Direct.

We’re sure some will doubt that, just for the sake of doubting, but Microsoft have far more than just a few games to tell people about, and Developer Direct is the perfect chance for Microsoft to do exactly what they’ve promised and be more transparent with the users.
Showing they can give information about games (gamepass) and features (Friends & Family) coming to their services, will help make Developer Direct much more than a simple “Dev Diary”.

Either way, we’re looking forward to seeing what’s next from Xbox (and I’m looking forward to halving my Xbox Gamepass payments each month) so let’s hope we’re hearing much more, soon.