Xbox One: Home Gold allows families to share Xbox Live Gold membership

Microsoft has announced Home Gold which will allow Xbox Live Gold members to share their subscription with others on their home console.

According to Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten, Home Gold is tied to your Xbox Live Gold account and tethered to your console and gamertag. It will allow other users in the house to use multiplayer features, apps, Game DVR and other Gold features using their own gamertag.

“So how it works is, on your console, anybody else on the console, whether it’s a babysitter that’s come over or a friend or your family, can participate in all the experiences like they’re on Gold,” Whitten told Polygon.

“It’s with their gamertag so they’re not on your gamertag, you don’t even have to be there, they’re not messing up your gamerscore or your storage or your queues or anything like that. It’s their full account experience, but it really gets to take full advantage of many of the Gold features.”

Users can log-in to their account on another Xbox One console – whether in the home or out – and all of their digital content will travel with them as long as they are logged into their XBL Gold account – the same way Xbox 360 dealt with digital content licenses, etc.

“We didn’t want people to have to understand a specific set of rules around how gold works different from content,” said Whitten. “We just wanted it to be really simple. And we wanted to give that full advantage to people in your house that are coming in to use your console or your content, to be able to play that content in the full way.”

Existing Xbox Live Gold members will have the service extended over to Xbox One and users “can even be logged in to Xbox 360 and Xbox One at the same time.”

Home Gold will not be available to Xbox 360 owners and the Family Pack is not being resurrected.

Whitten said the Family Sharing option, which was announced and then scrapped by Microsoft when it dropped its online requirements, may return in the future – something Microsoft said previously.

“As we move forward, I think we will continue to refine the best way to make it work but I’ll say that it comes down to a pretty basic set of ideas,” Whitten said. “I just want, as much as possible, to replicate the experience that a typical family has with physical content with digital content.

“One of the things we discovered with some of the stuff we’ve done with our family stuff in the past is that it was too limited and didn’t fit enough family styles or where people were. We’re working across Microsoft to think about how do you manage family accounts and how do you both enroll in that family and how does that feel right and simple from a user perspective.

“The thing I don’t want is a whole bunch of complex UI that you have to do to both enroll in and manage a family. Part of that is what we’re doing with Home Gold, to make it very simple to cover a very large base case.

“It would be cool if I could still see my family’s content when I’m somewhere else and I can start playing that content, assuming no one else is playing it.”

Whitten also said Microsoft understands “physical disc exchange,” but at the same time it needs to be managed so sharing doesn’t turn into “some unbounded sharing club that isn’t fair for the game creators.”

There’s more on this through the link and Whitten has even explained it better over on Xbox Wire which you should really give a read.

Xbox One is expected sometime in November.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold-allows-families-to-share-xbox-live-gold-membership/

This is freaking awesome.

So this means I can have multiple gamertags on my machine without having to buy separate Gold accounts right?

NukeLaCoog wrote:

So this means I can have multiple gamertags on my machine without having to buy separate Gold accounts right?  

Thats the way i understood it. More than likely the Family gold memberships will be more than the regular gold-individual account. Sounds like their replacement for the family pass

The great part is that they are trying to find ways to share games within households and at friend's houses.

If family sharing comes back then I think I may switch to all digital downloads.

Winners wrote:

Microsoft has announced Home Gold which will allow Xbox Live Gold members to share their subscription with others on their home console.

According to Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten, Home Gold is tied to your Xbox Live Gold account and tethered to your console and gamertag. It will allow other users in the house to use multiplayer features, apps, Game DVR and other Gold features using their own gamertag.

“So how it works is, on your console, anybody else on the console, whether it’s a babysitter that’s come over or a friend or your family, can participate in all the experiences like they’re on Gold,” Whitten told Polygon.

“It’s with their gamertag so they’re not on your gamertag, you don’t even have to be there, they’re not messing up your gamerscore or your storage or your queues or anything like that. It’s their full account experience, but it really gets to take full advantage of many of the Gold features.”

Users can log-in to their account on another Xbox One console – whether in the home or out – and all of their digital content will travel with them as long as they are logged into their XBL Gold account – the same way Xbox 360 dealt with digital content licenses, etc.

“We didn’t want people to have to understand a specific set of rules around how gold works different from content,” said Whitten. “We just wanted it to be really simple. And we wanted to give that full advantage to people in your house that are coming in to use your console or your content, to be able to play that content in the full way.”

Existing Xbox Live Gold members will have the service extended over to Xbox One and users “can even be logged in to Xbox 360 and Xbox One at the same time.”

Home Gold will not be available to Xbox 360 owners and the Family Pack is not being resurrected.

Whitten said the Family Sharing option, which was announced and then scrapped by Microsoft when it dropped its online requirements, may return in the future – something Microsoft said previously.

“As we move forward, I think we will continue to refine the best way to make it work but I’ll say that it comes down to a pretty basic set of ideas,” Whitten said. “I just want, as much as possible, to replicate the experience that a typical family has with physical content with digital content.

“One of the things we discovered with some of the stuff we’ve done with our family stuff in the past is that it was too limited and didn’t fit enough family styles or where people were. We’re working across Microsoft to think about how do you manage family accounts and how do you both enroll in that family and how does that feel right and simple from a user perspective.

“The thing I don’t want is a whole bunch of complex UI that you have to do to both enroll in and manage a family. Part of that is what we’re doing with Home Gold, to make it very simple to cover a very large base case.

“It would be cool if I could still see my family’s content when I’m somewhere else and I can start playing that content, assuming no one else is playing it.”

Whitten also said Microsoft understands “physical disc exchange,” but at the same time it needs to be managed so sharing doesn’t turn into “some unbounded sharing club that isn’t fair for the game creators.”

There’s more on this through the link and Whitten has even explained it better over on Xbox Wire which you should really give a read.

Xbox One is expected sometime in November.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold-allows-families-to-share-xbox-live-gold-membership/

you can't do most of that stuff now
I can do half of that on ps3 with one psn plus !

This does not extend to the xbox 360 however from the article i read a couple days back. I will look again to find the place where that was confirmed.

pariah_81 wrote:

This does not extend to the xbox 360 however from the article i read a couple days back.  I will look again to find the place where that was confirmed.  

Yea it says that in this article.

Home Gold will not be available to Xbox 360 owners and the Family Pack is not being resurrected.

For those of you who are using the family plan, I got an email from MS announcing that your family plan accounts will be converted to 4 regular accounts and a bonus 3 months of live are going to be added to each account as a thank you/whatever.

Repo, we can do many things on the xbox that ps3 users would find interesting.

Like being able to log in 4 separate users at the home screen, all at the same time. Or, the ability to switch users without being kicked back out to the home screen.

This was an xbox live thread though....was.

Repo_Dog wrote:

you can't do most of that stuff now [?]
I can do half of that on ps3 with one psn plus !

Somebody's always got to kick the dog, huh?


I don't know which console I will be purchasing but am a little confused about all the different offerings and subscriptions among the old and new XBox (Gold, Home Gold, Family Pack, Family Sharing...). My Gold membership expires about the same time as the new consoles come out so I may have to purchase monthly access till making a decision. There's probably little change if any for a single GT on a single Gold account, though.

If that's the case I have to start reserving new GT's... hmmm

BlackGeeHawd
Sr Blackhawxxpiece 88
Optic Blackhawxx
HandJobs4Blackhawxx
Blackboomhawxx 88
Criptic Hawxx 88
BlackNewf 88
DeltaHawxx 88
Blacknbluehound
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FriedBlackhawxxfeet
IamTheBlackhawxx 88
KillerBlackRynoHawxx
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The possibilities are endless!  




I think I need a nap now... me getting goofy

Me too Horst.

I don't think anybody really knows much about how any of it will work out here in the real world.

My kid had his own $500 bucks and even with me trying to convince him to take a wait and see approach and to give the PS4 a serious look for HIS money but it was to no avail. He's happy though since he's now assured a launch edition.

I am fortunate in that I will most likely have a PS4 and XB1 in the house before I ever reach into my own wallet to determine who gets my money.

I have a lot more questions about the PS4 than the XB1 though. I kinda wish I had a Vita so I could get some sort of look at the new psn stuff already up and running on that thing.

Sucks that Gold is leaving. That was a great deal that MS gave us and I took full advantage ($25 for a year of gold/account). I have no idea how "Home Gold" will work. I don't think anybody will really, truly know until some units are in living rooms.

Good news from the article to me was that my gold will extend to the xbox one without additional fees. One xbox live, one fee......works on both consoles. How the "home" part of that ties in, I have no idea. They don't explain things worth crap.

I'm still hoping for a full return of family sharing as an option. I will happily go with the online check ins if I can get that deal they were offering.

You gonna be online today Horst?

Yessir. Studying now but will be on this evening. I'll catch up to you sometime after 6pm your time if you're on then.

BLACKHAWXX 88 wrote:

If that's the case I have to start reserving new GT's... hmmm

BlackGeeHawd
Sr Blackhawxxpiece 88
Optic Blackhawxx
HandJobs4Blackhawxx
Blackboomhawxx 88
Criptic Hawxx 88
BlackNewf 88
DeltaHawxx 88
Blacknbluehound
Dubious Blackhawxx 88
FriedBlackhawxxfeet
IamTheBlackhawxx 88
KillerBlackRynoHawxx
BlackhawxxJunkie

The possibilities are endless!  




I think I need a nap now... me getting goofy

you missed BlackFYellowHawxx