Go for Gold

Fostering Community

Xbox Live® brought us out of the living room and into the online arena, allowing us to communicate and play with and against our closest friends and millions of other gamers across the street and around the world.Friends have been made, rivals have been met, enemies have been conquered, and relationships have even blossomed.

With Xbox 360™, Xbox Live looks to ratchet up every aspect of the online community by offering an even more personalized and user-friendly experience.

Xbox Live offers not just an online gaming
service, but an online community to thrive in.

One on One Chat
Few features put you closer to those on your friends list faster than chatting. With Xbox 360 it’s as easy as a flick of the Guide Button and a couple button presses and you can send a voice chat request to anyone online on your friends list. You don't even have to be playing the same game. Heck, you don't have to be playing any game at all.

Get the full skinny on the chat feature here.

Matchmaking

Gamers want to play against friends and other likeminded gamers, and they want to play competitively against folks at or around their same skill level. The finely tuned TrueSkill™ Matchmaking system ensures just that.

• TrueSkill™ Matchmaking: This feature tracks every match of every game you ever play in an effort to get a firm grip on your gaming skill. Once established, your TrueSkill rating is used to match you up in competitive ranked games against players of equal skill. Don't worry, it's not set in stone. Get better, and so will your TrueSkill rating.
• Gamer Zone: Within your gamer profile, you select a Gamer Zone (like casual gamers, hardcore gamers, family gamers, and so on). When searching for unranked games, the system takes your Gamer Zone into account and searches out other players in your zone to compete with.
• Avoid/Prefer: Use the avoid/prefer system to help ensure a good experience for all in unranked games. Griefers and punks that try to cheat and ruin your experience rate an "avoid" tag, and in future games the system will skirt around games they're in. Likewise, slap a "prefer" tag on cool players you had a blast with, and you're more likely to compete with them again.

Achievements
Friendly rivalries have always been a catalyst to new and exciting goals, and now you won't need a phone call from a friend boasting about this, that, and the other; look up your friend's achievements online and see what they've been up to.

Spectator Mode
Chatting with, playing against, downloading content from, and checking up on your friends and fellow gamers seems like enough, but with spectator mode available in games that support it (think Project Gotham Racing® 3 at launch), look forward to yet another level of immersion. Use spectator mode to check out matches without having to compete in them. Watch friends battle it out, see the masters of the leaderboard prove their skill, or simply get an active sneak preview of a map or track you haven't experienced.

Check out our article on spectator mode for more details.

Friends List
It may not seem like a new feature, but with the opportunity to tap your Guide Button and see what your friends are up to at any time, and the ability to look at not only your friends list, but your friend's friends list as well, the sense of active community is heightened that much more. Gaming is always better when among friends, and Xbox Live makes sure you're not only surrounded by your choice of gamers you want to play with, but can interact and benefit from them as well.

With chat, an intelligent matchmaking service, an upgraded friends list, gamer profiles you can peruse at your leisure, and a whole lot more, Xbox Live offers not just an online gaming service, but a community of friends and like-minded people to thrive in.

Article by Alex McLain