Separated parents, two houses, xbox help

Hi. My wife and I have recently separated and our son spends time 50:50 between us. He has an xbox in each house.

As chief ‘technology consultant’ for the family I need to find a way to make the following work:

1) He can access xbox live gold in both houses so can play Fortnite with his friends.
2) His games work in both houses.
3) His time limits work in both houses (we’ve set up that it only works 7am-7pm and he has 30 min per day).

The situation seems to be that #1 is fine, #2 works at his mums house as normal but at my house it only works if he logs into my machine as me first (otherwise when he tried to load games it gives an error message) and #3 only works in one house.

Is there a way to achieve all 3 goals? Trying to fix it is causing much communication between my ex and me, which is fine but I think we’d both rather save up ‘talking energy’ for when we actually have to discuss important stuff.

Thanks.

Look up Xbox game sharing. Basically you set his Xbox as your Home Xbox and then remove or password protect the account. Then set your Xbox as his Home console. He’ll get access to your Gold sub on his account and you’ll still be able to set time limits etc. There may be a few more steps but there should be plenty of guides online.

Is the Gold sub in his name or yours?

Which is the Gold subscriber’s home console?

No idea about time limits, that’s a problem I’d want to address with parenting rather than technology and 30 minutes per day seems somewhat draconian unless he’s 4.

Thanks both. I’ll check if it’s my or his gold account and which is the home account.

@cougar 30 min is the default, any more he earns with jobs/behaviour etc

Here’s my setup, which replicates yours and your needs just both Xboxs are in the same house…

I have the ‘master’ Xbox account, and Xbox Live Gold is in my name. On this account I’ve added both my kids as family members with screen time and parental controls set up (purchase requests enforced etc)

Xbox A is set as my ‘home’ Xbox with profiles for all of us. All purchases are made on this one, either by me, or ones of the kids. On this one, anyone just needs to sign in, and they have access to all the games and the Xbox Live Gold.

Xbox B just has profiles for all of us on. If a kid or I want to use it, my profile needs to be signed in before one of theirs. If this is done, they have access to all the games and Xbox Live Gold.

I suggest you set up the one at your ex’s place like my Xbox A, and the one at your place like my B. Then they have ability to play anything at your ex’s without you needing to sign in, but time is still controlled by screen time and they need to make a request to buy anything or more screen time that can be remotely approved by phone. Your house does require you to sign in, but you’ll be on hand to do so, and then everything else is the same. This removes the need for your ex to know your sign in details.

All the parental controls and other setup are best done through the website, it’s loads easier than dicking around with a controller to type everything in. There is supposed to be a new mobile app to do it all, but I haven’t tried it yet.

Alternative suggestion:

Have one Xbox and move it between each house, with sets of cables and controllers at each property to make connection quick and easy.

Thanks @bensale 👍

I’ve checked and the live account is in my name. I’ll check where the home Xbox is when I’m back from my ride!