So what's the catch with XBox live family memberships?

Question

I was thinking today that my father, my brother, and in fact various family members, all have XBox live accounts. I'm aware there is some type of discount for purchasing a family account, and I'm wondering why we wouldn't want to do that. I don't want to break any rules, and I would want to use the individual accounts concurrently and on different boxes. Sharing a password or something like that wouldn't matter though - they're family, I trust them.

It seems too good to be true - so who'll be the first to rain on my parade?

Answer 1

Running the account on different consoles is fine, the only restriction there is that you have to be in the same country.

The biggest drawback of a family account, is that only the primary account holder can make purchases against their own billing account. So if you are the primary account holder, your brother will not be able to make purchases on the account.

The primary account holder will also be able to see the activity of the other members within the family, this can be a problem if you don't want to share all your gaming activity with whoever becomes the primary account holder. However as you've already stated this is probably not a problem for you as you trust your family.

For more information see the family pack faq.