I felt this deserved its own thread.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/arti...ames-with-ten-family-members-but-some-details
Yusuf Mehdi was intereviewed by Ars Technica and is saying the same thing:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/microsoft-defends-the-xbox-ones-licensing-used-game-policies/
Update (6/14): Major Nelson is working on a blog update to (hopefully) further clarify things:
Thanks Troll.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/arti...ames-with-ten-family-members-but-some-details
The idea is that ten people in your family group can all share your games. Think of it like a loaning system, but you're not loaning anyone a phyiscal product. If you're in my family group, you can play my games, and vice versa.
“I think the policy makes sense,” Spencer said. “It’s not ten different people all playing the game concurrently, but when you think about a real usage scenario, and we thought about it around a family, and I know certain people will create a family group of people that aren’t all part of the same family, and I do think that’s an advantage, and people will use that. I saw it on NeoGAF instantly, the Xbox Family creation threads, where people said 'Hey be a part of my family.'”
“No birth certificates will need to be sent in!” Spencer said when I asked if the service required a blood test. “I do think that’s an advantage of the ecosystem that we have.”
So that answers one question: Microsoft doesn't seem to care whether or not the ten people in the group are actually family members. They can be friends, roommates, boyfriends, girlfriends, your dog's groomer… you pick ten people, and you share games with them.
Yusuf Mehdi was intereviewed by Ars Technica and is saying the same thing:
Since its announcement, there has been some confusion over the details of sharing your Xbox One game library with up to ten "family members." Mehdi couldn't give comprehensive details, but he did clarify some things.
For one, a family member doesn't have to be a "blood relative," he said, eliminating the extremely unlikely possibility that the Xbox One would include a built-in blood testing kit. For another, they don't have to live in the primary owner's house—I could name a friend that lives 3,000 miles away as one of my "family members" Mehdi said.
You'll be able to link other Xbox Live accounts as having shared access to your library when you first set up a system and will also be able to add them later on (though specific details of how you manage these relationships is still not being discussed). The only limitation, it seems, is that only one person can be playing the shared copy of a single game at any given time. All in all, this does sound like a pretty convenient feature that's more workable than simply passing discs around amongst friends who are actually in your area.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/microsoft-defends-the-xbox-ones-licensing-used-game-policies/
Update (6/14): Major Nelson is working on a blog update to (hopefully) further clarify things:
Thanks Troll.