This year at E3, Microsoft’s press conference primarily focused on how they would improve the gaming community and make it easier for people to play video games with like mind people. Two ways Microsoft aims to help out the community are through the Clubs and Looking for Group Application.
During Microsoft’s press conference, Phil Spencer announced that two new social programs called Clubs and Looking for Group (LFG) would be coming to Xbox Live soon with no official release date announced. Earlier today Xbox One UK published an article stating that the Xbox Live social applications Clubs and Looking for Group would be available for Xbox Preview members to download and test out as of today. However, this is not true. On the Reddit post made by the user Zavistic showed pictures of an article supposedly by Major Nelson announcing the availability of Clubs and Looking for Group for Xbox Preview members to test out. Major Nelson went to Reddit to respond to people’s comments and make clear that clubs and looking for group apps were not quite ready and that he would post more information once they were ready.
Clubs and Looking for Group is Microsoft’s attempt to empower the community and help them get closer to their friends or find new people with similar interests. The Clubs application allows for players to create and manage their club for whatever they like with the possibility of join other clubs. Clubs is about bringing people together. Players can use the Clubs app to meet and game with people who have their similar interests. Although people already do this on Facebook, Reddit, and other popular social media sites, the Clubs application allows for you do it while sitting at your Xbox device. The clubs application can also be used to create game nights for your friends where you can play your favorite games. When you are in a club you will be able to chat, set up parties, play games and share content with other members of the same club. Will players be able to share their video game content so that everyone in their club can play the same game for a specific time without owning it? Will content like ideas, drawings, or music be able to be shared? In the Reddit post, Major Nelson stated that he already owns the Major Nelson club name.
Looking for Groups or LFG app allows players to search for people that they might want to game with and works for any Xbox One title. Mike Yabarra suggests that using the LFG app will be simple with this statement, “If you want to do daily missions on a certain game, all you have to do is set up an LFG post with your requirements so you can find the right gamers, set up your rules, the game, and game mode you are looking for. Here’s a brief explanation of how LFG works, you can browse open LFG posts, find the one you want to join and request to join it, session owners can choose which gamers they want to join the session, and when the session is full they can quickly invite the players to a party and game.” Through the LFG app Xbox Live players will no longer have to search through online forums to find a group to complete activities with.
In addition to the Clubs and Looking for Group applications, Microsoft is improving the gamerscore leaderboard by making the leaderboard reset at the beginning of every month rather than displaying the results for a 30 day period. Also, emojis are coming to the virtual keyboard. Emojis will be added to the virtual keyboard and can be accessed by holding the right trigger until they show up. Press and hold on the emoji to display different versions of the one you selected.
These additions to the Xbox life community may make lives for gamers easier while helping to eliminate the social awkwardness of meeting new people. The Clubs and Looking for Group applications should be available to PC and Xbox One users later this fall. Ultimately only Major Nelson and the Microsoft team know if the article was accidentally published before hand or if the photographed article was a fake. Are you excited about these new additions? What might your club be named? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below.
