Skip to main content

Xbox Live’s upcoming Clubs feature helps you find and chat with like-minded gamers

Xbox Live, the undisputed jewel in Microsoft’s online gaming crown, is getting a lot more personal. At its E3 press conference in Los Angeles on Monday, the company announced Clubs, a new feature that’ll allow players to form close-knit online groups of like-minded folks.

Clubs are Microsoft’s attempt at making Xbox Live more attractive and palatable for gamers otherwise intimidated by its broader, 46 million-strong community. Club membership can be tweaked on a granular level — Club managers have the ability to allow anyone to join, require invites, or even exclude uninvited members entirely — and club members can set profanity filters, age restrictions, and even boot members who don’t play nicely with others.

Recommended Videos

“If you went in and befouled the club or somebody’s house, [you would expect] that there would be some personal consequence to it,” she told the Wall Street Journal. Clubs, she said, will ideally be “the bar or the house that you would return to the next day.”

The aim is to create welcoming micro-communities bound by common interests, professions, and gaming habits, said Microsoft’s Engineering Lead for Clubs Ashley Speicher. Everyone from “Porsche fans who play racing games” to “office colleagues looking to bond after work” can create clubs. That’s not to say all Clubs will engender the same spirit of generosity — “Will you have close-minded clubs? Yes,” Xbox chief Phil Spencer told the Wall Street Journal — but Microsoft points out that all Xbox Live members agree to abide by its Code of Conduct, which prohibits hate speech and other forms of bullying. And Xbox Live has tools in place to report abusive behavior to Microsoft community moderators, Spencer said.

Looking for Groups
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Clubs will encourage socialization — they’ll let members chat persistently across Xbox One apps, for one. And they won’t be bound to Microsoft’s ecosystem of gaming hardware — the company will soon debut an app for iOS and Android that’ll let you manage Club settings and chat with members on the go. “We want to be on any device that a gamer has,” Microsoft’s Director of Program Management at Xbox Mike Ybarra told The Verge, “whether that’s a competing platform or our platform.”

In addition to Clubs, Microsoft’s introducing a new feature, Looking for Groups, that will allow Xbox Live members to find in-the-moment companions. If you’re having trouble completing a raid in Destiny or need team members for a quick Battlefield match, for instance, you’ll be able to post a call-out to the respective games’ hub pages for all to see.

Both Clubs and Looking for Groups will launch as part of the Xbox One’s October update.

Kyle Wiggers
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 gets a visual upgrade but stays wonderfully familiar
THPS 3 + 4

The year was 2001, and I was flat on my back in the middle of the street after bailing hard from a failed ollie.

Once I dusted myself off, I decided to try again, but in a safer, more digital aspect. Two decades ago, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 devoured my free time, and now the remake is back and doing the exact same thing. An excellent remake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 brings two classic titles to a modern audience but adds little to the original experience in a way that leaves the game feeling curiously anachronistic.

Read more
The best PlayStation launch games, ranked
best ps1 games sony ps1

The most important time in a console's life is its launch. This is when a new piece of hardware needs to prove that it is worth investing in, which always comes down to games. Launch titles are rarely the best games on the system, although some of Nintendo's launch games buck that trend, but at least need to show off what the system can do. PlayStation always had a secondary selling point with its consoles, such as doubling as a CD player or DVD player, so it is interesting to speculate how successful those early consoles would've been judged solely on their games. We now have launch titles from the PS1 all the way up to the PS5 (and soon to be PS6) to look back on with fresh eyes to see just how good those first games were.

Air Combat - PlayStation 1

Read more
The Switch 2 is the perfect example of why console launches don’t feel special anymore
The Switch 2 being unboxed.

I will never forget the unbearable excitement I felt on that early morning on my 7th birthday. It was 1998, and Pokémon was the biggest thing in the world, especially for an elementary school kid like me. Except that I didn't have a single card or game to my name. In fact, I didn't even have a Game Boy. That, plus Pokémon, was the only thing I asked for that birthday, and I knew I would get it.

I can still remember lying awake half the night, unable to sleep while my imagination ran wild with unrealistic machinations of what the game would be like. I woke up just as early to the sounds of my parents and sister setting up decorations downstairs and bided my time before I could go down. It was a school day, but they could sense my excitement well in advance and agreed to let me open one thing before school.

Read more