Apple Arcade: What is a family pass?

It's easy to get lost in all the information that was given to us during Apple Arcade's announcement yesterday. Amongst the flurry of details was that the $4.99 price tag for Apple Arcade included a Family Pass.

Apple didn't supply many details for what this actually meant, so we're happy to inform you now. Essentially, it will allow up 6 people to have access to Apple Arcade through Apple's existing Family Sharing feature.

This can already be used to share an Apple Music subscription with your family. However, the major difference here is that a Family Apple Music subscription comes at an increased cost whereas Apple Arcade includes this option at its only price point of $4.99.

If you're unfamiliar with Family Sharing its essentially a feature that allows you to invite up to 5 members of your family to share iTunes, Apple Books and App Store purchases. This allows you to share purchases with multiple people without having to use the same account.

If you set up the family group then you will have control over what gets shared, being able to select what the rest of your group can have access to from a menu. Presumably, when Apple Arcade gets released on 19th September it will be added as an option Family Sharing hub that you can simply switch on to let the folks you've chosen to share with access the service.

If you want to set up Family Sharing before Apple Arcade is available then Apple has created a step by step guide that's easy to follow.

Apple Arcade will be available from 19th September for $4.99 a month. We've prepared an extensive list of all the games you'll be able to play at some stage on the service if you wanted to see if there's enough to them to tempt you over.