During this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo briefing, Microsoft said that it’d attempt to make gathering like-minded gamers over Xbox Live a bit easier by letting users create Clubs — essentially guilds. Members of the Xbox One Preview Program can enjoy the feature in its early incarnation right now.
Microsoft announced that Clubs would be available through the Xbox One Preview Program this morning on its Major Nelson blog. Through Xbox Live, users are able to create groups based on their interests, complete with messaging boards and hints at what kind of gamers their Club is looking for. A creator of a Club is able to govern exactly who makes it in. In addition to that, Microsoft is introducing a dedicated search engine for finding all the new Clubs about to populate Xbox Live in the next few weeks and months. Looking for Groups allows Xbox Live users to advertise their need for someone to play with on the service.
At some point soon Microsoft has plans to roll out Xbox Live Clubs to Xbox on Windows and the different mobile experiences that now connect to Xbox Live. Unfortunately, there’s no hard date for their launch. There’s also no hard release date for Xbox Live Arena. That’s another feature that Microsoft announced at E3 2016. The September Xbox One Update also packs support for Emojiis in messages and posts, plus an upgraded Gamerscore Leaderboard that refreshes at the beginning of every month.
Early word from users that have managed to experience Xbox Live Clubs are positive. If Microsoft sticks to the schedule its used in the past, everyone can look forward to getting the feature in late September or early October.
I’m off to go create a social account dedicated to Star Trek Online. Maybe I’ll call it, the Kahns.
