Microsoft’s indispensable Xbox Live service was always tough on gaming households, requiring family members and roommates to piggyback on one another’s accounts or spring for separate $50-a-year subscriptions. Yesterday the company announced it will start selling 4-for-the-price-of-2 Xbox Live Gold Family Packs, which give you four subscriptions for $100 a year.

The master account can distribute Microsoft’s virtual currency to related accounts, and also can monitor the other accounts so you can collect evidence for that long talk with Junior about how he’s been spending too much time playing Transformers: War for Cybertron.

It’s not coming out until November, possibly so the company can think of a way to prevent four friends who live apart from splitting a family membership.

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