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My son is 10 and has an X Box and wants to Live Gold membership to play with his mates. I've got the console set up as me as primary user/Adult, does the X Box live go in my name and it's available for us both to use ( although I don't actually play it) or will it be specific to him?
Also is it easy/straight forward to set up so he can only play with certain mates and not all the internet??
It is specific to the "Gamertag" that purchases it so your lad would have to log in as you if he wanted to use it, my 2 lads have one each as both have boxes and play against each other in different rooms etc
It does go in your name, yes. It's easy enough to setup, although I find the X-box menus to be a ballache to navigate, but the MS account on my phone is v easy to use to actually pay for stuff.
I'm far from an expert but friends seem easy to set-up and control, there are a couple of issues though - my son is prone to adding friends of friends that he doesn't know that well (e.g. from a different year group at school), so I have to check his friends list now and again just to verify that they are actually his mates. Some of his friends also seem to play on their parents accounts which is perhaps not ideal.
Most online multi-player games (e.g. Fortnite, the current monster game that all the kids play and demand money so they can buy completely fatuous costumes) will have the facility to talk to other players on your team via headset. So if you're not playing with people you know you'd have to actively switch that off. I trust my kid to do this himself - he's ten but it's miles easier to run these things when they're young, XBox is in the living room etc. I guess it's a lot harder into the teenage years with smartphones and they need their own space more.
A word of warning if you create a new account for your child's Xbox tag - make sure all email addresses entered into the membership system are the same (ie yours) - make sure you know all the passwords (keep it the same).
I say this because Microsoft try to hide all the information from the Primary User/adult so that the subscription keeps renewing. It sounds like paranoia but it's true! My kid had a Gold membership years ago, which I let the ex-wife take over the payments for when we split up. The Gold membership ceased ages ago and yet and payment, for which neither of us was notified, was taken by MS recently from the ex's account and tracking it down was bloody hard! Still don't actually know what it was for.
[i] is it easy/straight forward[/i] loLZ
Don't pay for it by direct debit or card.
Buy a gift card with a code. Then it can't auto renew without your intervention.
You can log a card against the adult account and gift amounts to the childrens accounts to control any unauthorised spending.
A bloke at my work let his 6 year old use his adult login to play Roblox and the little fella spent nearly £600 in 45 mins.
Also, figure out how to work the parental controls / screen time restrictions
It's a bit of a PITA to set up but worth it when you can cut them off from your phone
Not just me then PP! Luckily my lad is reasonably sensible and hasn't drained the accounts!
[i]Buy a gift card with a code[/i] <-- Excellent advice.
Funny, after typing the above, switched to my mail and a message from Microsoft has just this minute arrived...
"We're switching to a model that'll give your kids more control over their privacy and data settings, based on how old they are." hmm
As perchy said, get a voucher perhaps even but one for two weeks or so and trial it to ensure your happy with settings/security. I once linked a credit card to An account and it was bloody impossible to cancel it. Things may have changed a bit now but better to be safe.
Thanks all. Might get a trial one first and see how it goes. I bloody hate setting the Xbox stuff up!!