Seriously, Microsoft Needs To Reconsider Xbox Live Friends

FleshEatingZipper writes: Statistically speaking, it’s safe to say you didn’t camp in front of your favorite gaming retailer on November 15th, 2002 to pick up one of the first Xbox Live subscriptions, back when it was $35 for a year, came with a headset and some boring demos. So it’s strange that aside from slight tweaks when the Xbox 360 came out three years later, or when Avatars came out a few years after that, managing friends on the service is about as big a pain now as it was when the service started.

[Gazondaily]

....

[seinfan]

It's funny that he complains about the friend cap limit, yet he only recognized 15 people out of the 100 on his list. I almost never add anybody that I don't know on XBL. Out of the 23 people on my friends list, I know 22 of them in real life. Bringing up facebook, almost everyone doesn't even treat that as a list of friends. I could create a random account on there, send a friend request to hundreds of people, and quite possibly 90% of them would accept it. I only have 100 friends on my list and I know every single one of them in real life.

[MrBeatdown]

"It's funny that he complains about the friend cap limit, yet he only recognized 15 people out of the 100 on his list."

Yeah, he said that himself...

"Of course, that all seems useless in the face of the fact that scrolling through that list of people (see pic above), I didn’t recognize any of them."

Both, are still good points though, and the two issues are relevant, since the more people you add, the harder it becomes to remember who's who.

[MrBeatdown]

So, what exactly are people disagreeing with?

Is it the fact that the author acknowledged the pointlessness of wanting an expanded friends list, when the current system makes it hard to remember who's who amongst 100 friends?

Or are people disagreeing with the very simple concept of it being hard to remember all the individuals as the group gets larger?

I'll probably get disagrees for asking questions now too.

[TFXR]

Maybe if the Friends system worked better, I might be enticed to use it more.

~N

[gamingdroid]

I think that is a very good point. MS needs to make some innovation in this area.

Sure I only have like a handful of friends on my Xbox Live account, but I can see how a cap of a 100 is long overdue for an upgrade.

[vishant101]

His main problem is adding friends he doesn't know and the excuse that think of all the people that change their gamertag the fact is not many people do it cost as much to change your name on live then buy an arcade game which is also a bad and a good thing. Being able to add friends to groups i.e school friends, family etc would be cool and allow for easier navigation and microsoft needs to make friends snyc with all their applications i.e xbl and skype imagine a way u could message your friend regardless of what platform you are on.

[NoobJobz]

I had 100 friends on Live at one point until I realized that I didnt know the majority of them or never play with them. I remember back in the days of Gears 1, I used to get FRs every single match almost. My friend list was full, but full of random people. I have since deleted everybody that I dont know in real life or dont play games with. My list is down in the 30s now. Me personally, I dont need more than 100. I will never fill up my list as it is right now. At least not with people I know.

[NayThin]

This is a great article. They need to clean house with their current friends format and completely reiterate the way you interact with it.
Facebook integration is a no-brainer, the service is already on the console, now just integrate integrate integrate.

And how about an Xbox Live forum apart from xbox.com that is the place to go to build community or other friendships with gamers?
Another no-brainer.

How about more options for your Xbox Live profile? They are super ugly.

Anyway, again, great article, MS needs to hear this stuff. They are definitely starting to lag behind hard.

[RockmanII7]

What I did a week ago was just remove everybody on my friends list and add like 3 key people back. Now I'm up to 12 because I've been adding my friends friends and other people I removed who are still close to my friends.

Edit - Oh god, that is the worst name for a website I've ever seen. I'm literally horrified now.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Haha all the good domains are taken

[buttclown]

I don't know about this being a good read at all. I haven't had any problems with the service. Sounds to me like this guy just has some problems remembering people's gamertags but likes having a full list.