The Friends & Family tier has expanded to new regions after successful trials. Will hopefully stretch further afield too.
Xbox
These are added to Ireland and Colombia, which have been used to test the plan since September last year.
The Friends & Family plan costs a bit more than standard Game Pass access, but allows up to four additional people to be added to the same membership. They each then get all the benefits of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – including Game Pass itself, Cloud Gaming, and EA Play.
There are just a few caveats. Each player must be in the same country as yourself, plus if you are upgrading from an existing prepaid Ultimate tier, your remaining subscription will be converted with each month remaining on your membership becoming 18-days of Friends & Family. This equates to the same monetary value and ensures you do not lose any existing credit.
Sadly, members on Xbox All Access cannot participate in the plan, as Game Pass Ultimate membership is intrinsically tied to repayments for the console itself.
Pricing for the Friends & Family plan is dependent on the country. It costs €21.99 per month in Ireland, for example, which is €9 more than the conventional Game Pass Ultimate tier.
There is no word yet on when it might come to the UK, US or other countries in central Europe. Hopefully, this latest rollout shows that it could be sooner than later.
We also hope that the prices don’t rise before it does. Xbox has recently bumped up its pricing for the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles in Sweden – which followed similar hikes in Japan. There is a possibility that price rises for its hardware could be coming to other regions too, with the company boss, Phil Spencer, admitting in October last year that it could be inevitable: “I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things,” he said at the time.