There are plenty of great features about Microsoft's xbox live service that have brought online gaming to a new level. There is however one thing that remains absent, that I have yet to see in any 360 game and that's the beautiful party system from Halo 2.
This was a phenomenal system that made going online and playing with friends so easy, I could create a party, invite my friends, chat for minute while everyone arrived, then head off to kick some ass. Now I understand that I can join any unranked game, then head to my friends list and fire off invite to people from there, but to be quite frank it is not the same.
Some developers have reported that the reason it is not in their games is because Microsoft's "trueskill" system does not allow it. This kind of makes sense, as many abused the party system in Halo 2 to level up friends in ranked games. So is the solution to get rid of it? not allow it? no, even simpler, don't allow it in ranked games. problem solved.
There are also reports that the upcoming cross platform Shadowrun will support it, as well as Halo 3. So if that's the case, is it only games that microsoft want's to have the party system are allowed it?
Xbox.com and other gaming forums are all complaining about the lack of this fantastic feature, especially in the great gears of war. Nothing is more annoying than starting a match, inviting your friends, playing a few rounds against some others, then having to do it all over again when starting a new match.
Get with it Microsoft, when a feature is that successful and enjoyable it should be MANDATORY for every game, not excluded.
/end rant.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I've only used it on R:FoM but it is an awesome feature. Surely they'll put it back in Halo 3 at the least, eh?