Xbox One Microsoft just ended the Family Plan for good

[AvalonX]

Microsoft sent this announcement via e-mail to all Family Plan members. This is terrible for people who have more than one console. Also note (in bold) that this answers the questions about the Gold Live sharing on multiple consoles. So if you plan to throw out your 360's and game library and have you family glued to one Xbox One then you are good. Once you go that friends house your family cannot play in Live on either console unless you have an additional sub. Terrible.

Xbox Live Gold Family Pack Conversion to Individual Memberships
As a valued Xbox Live Gold member, we'd like to thank you and your family for being part of the Gold community.

We continually evaluate our offerings and are always working to provide services that best meet the needs of our customers.
Starting August 27, 2013, we will be converting each activated account on your Gold Family Pack to an individual Xbox Live Gold membership to prepare for new upcoming features on Xbox Live Gold. Rest assured, each individual membership will work on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Through the new Home Gold feature on Xbox One, a single Xbox Live Gold membership will allow anyone in your home to enjoy many Gold features like multiplayer, access to Gold entertainment apps, and more on your Xbox One.*
As a bonus, we will give each converted individual Xbox Live Gold membership from your Gold Family Pack an extra 3 months of Gold (in addition to the time remaining on your membership term).**
Before your memberships convert, you can still add family members to your Xbox Live Gold Family Pack, for a total of up to four accounts. However, any unassigned secondary accounts will no longer be accessible after your conversion. Please be sure to update your secondary accounts here.
After your memberships convert, the only Gold Family Pack features that will no longer be available are activity monitoring reports and Microsoft Points allowances. Activity monitoring reports will deactivate at the time of Gold Family Pack conversion, whereas the Microsoft Points allowance feature will no longer be available after the next Xbox 360 system update. Xbox Live family settings, including parental controls for what your kids can access and play on or offline, will still be available.

More Info >>

We hope you enjoy your 3 bonus months of Xbox Live Gold and continue to benefit from your Xbox Live Gold memberships on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Sincerely,
The Xbox Live Team

 

[BlackSolaris]

Well, that certainly is a bad thing, but hey, at least they gave out 3 months of free gold membership, which is rare for them to do, so props to them. The family plan thing, i didn't even knew that there were that many people interested in that, i always imagined the average person to just have one Xbox at home and that would be it, but looks like i was wrong.

 

[sc_shark]

i dont see it as an issue on 360.. if your a kid u have a dedicated system if your that young odds are your on your parents system... their is parental controls and really their is not much you can do to get in trouble on. their is always the ability to create a new game or save for diffrent family members. i have 3 people that ue my 360 from time to time usually for netflix/prime..

 

[Esperahol]

I guess I'm just obtuse, but I'm not seeing the issue. You can keep your 360 and your Xbone - all you're doing is effectively updating your membership plan. As a bonus you get three extra months. So yeah - why are you upset?

 

[OniBlackMage]

I suppose the fact that many of us were not family plan members to begin with, it proves the point that the program was not very widespread and could be discontinued. I'm also one of those who is a solo Gold member so it doesn't even phase me. Is anyone here a family plan user, because I wonder what features attracted you to the feature.

 

[AvalonX]

Surprised none of you really get it. Under the family plan each family member received their own id. Achievements, Gold, Netflix. Now, those IDs get converted to standard gold accounts that need to be paid for individually. That is a huge increase for those of us with kids. The Xbox One sharing only works on the home console. Once you roam that gets shut down too.

 

[Claptrap]

Surprised none of you really get it. Under the family plan each family member received their own id. Achievements, Gold, Netflix. Now, those IDs get converted to standard gold accounts that need to be paid for individually. That is a huge increase for those of us with kids. The Xbox One sharing only works on the home console. Once you roam that gets shut down too.

Whoa. I didn't really see a big deal at first, but now I get it. Sounds pretty awful, man. I wonder why the hell Microsoft is doing this. People dislike paying for all those services already but now they do this to screw families over? The timing is specially odd, because they should be playing nice for the sake of the upcoming X1.

 

[Medza]

Whoa. I didn't really see a big deal at first, but now I get it. Sounds pretty awful, man. I wonder why the hell Microsoft is doing this. People dislike paying for all those services already but now they do this to screw families over? The timing is specially odd, because they should be playing nice for the sake of the upcoming X1.

That is pretty bad, but I think that it only applies to a niche group of people. Most console gamers that I know usually have 1 account to use for the whole family, but I guess it's different if you have more than one Xbox one at home . But either way, I think that only a small percentage of people actually used this or they would have maintained the service otherwise.