Multiparty Chat

Since Xbox 360's launch, I've been trolling various message boards for feedback about my biggest feature: voice chat.  This post made the previous year of my life completely worth every minute.  There's something to be said about the power of Xbox Live to bring people together, regardless of what you think of the service.

That said, the most consistent piece of feedback is "Why can't I talk with multiple people in QuickChat?"  The simple answer is that it was a user experience choice.  The longer answer follows, but know that there isn't much in the lower level software that would stop us from letting users do this.  However, let's think about it some more...

Xbox Live requires users to have broadband connections that are at least 64kbps up & down.  On the other side of the coin, Xbox Live requires games to work within 64kbps.  Voice chat in a game uses some of that bandwidth.  How much depends on the number of users, mostly.  All Xbox Live games have voice chat in some way, so there is at least one user worth of "chat bandwidth."

The Xbox 360 guide is not omniscient.  It has a lot of info, but it can't know how many people are chatting inside a particular game.  However, it knows that there's at least one user worth of bandwidth around being used for chat because we wrote that rule.  When you use QuickChat, the Xbox 360 Guide mutes voice going to the game.  That means the game no longer has any voice chat to transmit, and hence stops using the voice chat bandwidth.  That frees up the bandwidth for QuickChat to use.

Imagine QuickChat did let you speak with multiple people at a time.  This means you'd need to send data to multiple people, thereby multiplying the amount of bandwidth you need.  This may make QuickChat go over the 64kbps total that is available.  If you have a much faster pipe, this would not be a problem.  However, measuring available bandwidth is a non-trivial problem that has had many academic papers written about it.

Going past the available bandwidth would make either your game or chat experience horrible - perhaps even both.  Hence, QuickChat doesn't go over the minimum requirements to make sure all our users have a consistent experience on Xbox Live.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2006
  Only 64Kb? I always thought there was a minimum of 128Kb up?
  
  Anyways, thanks for the post. And yes, the dashboard is the best thing ever.
  
  Now where is my clan support and messenger integration? ;)

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2006
  PingBack from http://www.quandoz.com/home/?p=49

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2006
  I agree that it is a small dissapointment that multi-user chat was not included as a Dashboard only feature similar to the original Xbox's multi-user chat.
  
  Many of my friends and I would use it for a ton of different things including setting up games over Xbox Live as well as chat during non-Xbox games or just to save on the phone charges.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I think a hard limit of 4 users should be used for chat... I mean, the data is switched from game chat to personal chat, so I dont really see how it impacts the bandwidth.
  
  I think MANY users want this feature.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Personally, I can understand why quick chat should stay the way it is (bandwidth limitations), but there should still be a multichat option in the dash.  Multichat could terminate for a given user when he or she boots a game.
  
  Regards,
  Bill

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  When a game has 16 players or even 32 players in it, doesn't the voice chat then also have to adhere to the same limitations?  Thus if a few friends trying to coordinate the evening's gaming session should also be able to fit in the same 64kbps limit, right?  when the game chat is muted is the data being transfered or can that bandwidth be freed up since it is not the active chat?  Shouldn't only the active chat be using up the 64kbps?  

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I would like to "sign" for a multichat petition, Bill has a great suggestion a few comments above mines, make it mute or exit when you enter a game but still give us the choice of having multiple parties chat when we are in the dashboard.
  
  You can even have a 4 people chat if these players are not playing on Live, sometimes I talk while playing a single player session with another friend who's playing in another one. Even if you are on live and doing this, the game "chat" is no longer active and you only hear your friend.
  
  I say yes for user choice.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I'd also vote for a dashboard-only multi chat.  It is very hard to organize games otherwise.  For example, I have a regular group of friends from college that plays on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8.  With the old xbox we would just meet up in the dashboard, talk, wait until we saw who was showing up, then decide what to play based on who was online.  Now we are stuck with a real mess of messages bouncing back and forth, or trying to agree beforehand on a game we can use simply as a chat room.    Other than this one regression the new dashboard is great.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  That logic is flawed, trying to protect people from having a bad lag experience.  There's plenty of other stuff peeps could do to diminish their bandwidth outside the xbox.
  
  Multiparty chat should be enabled.  Just put a warning on it if necessary.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The deletion of this functionality has REALLY hurt the ability of many smaller communities to coordinate games.   MS should at least release a free Live Arcade 'game' called 'ChatMania' and let us talk with up to sixteen players at once.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Group chat is so needed to help set games up.  Please stop teasing me that its possible to do and just make it happin.   A dashboard only chat would be great.  Even better if you can chat with xbox people too.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The logic of this post makes no sense to me.  In a game, I can talk to as many people as there are in the game.  Why can't I do this in private chat?  All people want to be able to do is invite 4 or so people into a private chat so that we can all chat on the same channel at once.  If you can do this in-game, you should be able to do it in private chat as well.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Why not just create it similar to what the first Xbox had? A lobby in the dashboard for chatting with friends. It doesn't do anything like you said were the problems of it. Please, do it.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  It would seem there are many options for not running into bandwidth problems with multiple chat channels - compression and scaling being the most obvious. I find it hard to beleive that the simplistic logic suggested is really the reason why multichat wasn't included... there are so many easy ways to program around that limitation.
  
  As with everyone else here, I would like to heartily petition you guys to change your minds - 2 person chat is a rediculous limitation for todays gamer. If skype can do 4, so should a service that we pay good money for - Live.
  
  "Get er done." - as they say.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I've got to agree that this is a sorely needed feature.  It makes it virtually impossible to try and set up a multiplayer game with some friends when you can only chat with one at a time.  It just drove us to pick up the phone, or even use Skype - and then what's the point of Live chat!?
  
  I'd like to suggest looking again at making multi user chat - even if just in the dashboard! - a reality.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The solution to the problem that you present is to tunnel the voice traffic through the central live servers rather than peer-to-peer which is what you are suggesting.  This is how I presume that you had the "lobby" on the original xbox, whereby the Live server combines the <insert unlimited number here> amount of people in the current chat session.
  What you've actually done with the 360 therefore is reduce the bandwidth you use by turning off the "lobby" (which you "host") and putting Quick Chat as a 1 to 1 relationship between each person.
  
  I think you've really missed the boat here....

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  How exactly would it affect the bandwidth if you have 8-16 people in game chat, and then you change channels and have 8-16 in private chat?
  
  In the end, isnt it still 8-16 people chatting? that shouldnt do anything to bandwidth...
  
  That is, unless you are still transmitting both channels at teh same time, but merely muting one.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I remember watching a pre-release interview with one of the 360 developers where he described being able to use the private chat in large multiplayer games to divide a team into offensive and defensive chats for example, making your own squad based channels even if the game didn't support that.  
  
  There must have been a time constraint or some other real reason for scaling this back.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Nice Blog xbox team, I like majors also, check out my blog www.doublefishlive.blogspot.com

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  We absolutely do need group voice chat in the dashboard. Thats a feature that even the original xbox had, so I was shocked to see it missing on the 360.
  
  Its nice to assemble a group of friends or a clan and talk strategy before you jump into a game. Or, if not everyone owns a certain game, you can still all chat together.
  

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  I was wondeing how that worked in game chat like halo 2. 8 people could talk at the same time. also can you show me one person that has 64KB download on dsl. there is noo one. most companys start at 100kb or more. If it's possible in halo 2 it has to be in dashboard. even 4 person chat would be nice. make it more in dashboard and 4 in game...wait the game channel allows us to speak with as many people as in the game. I played marble blast with 7 people, no lag and well all talked. this logic must be flawed some how. It just dosn't make sense

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  This could be solved in a couple of ways:
  
  1. As some have suggested, confine multiparty chat to the dashboard.
  
  2. Per another suggestion, just show a warning when a third person is added to the chat channel that says something like "Chatting with multiple people uses more bandwidth and can potentially degrade the multiplayer experience of some Live-enabled games."  Then let the players (having been suitably warned) choose to play their games with their multiparty chat if they want to.
  
  3. Use servers.  Then regardless of how many people you are chatting with, a console will only need to send out one copy of their voice to the server.  That takes care of the issue of user upload capacity albeit at the cost of additional server bandwidth (up and down) being utilized.  Still, the amount required is drop in the bucket compared to the amount necessary to enable marketplace game demo downloads.
  
  If user download capacity is an issue (which I very much doubt), then the server could mix the audio streams for the chat and send a single stream back to the console with everything (except oneself and any muted players, of course).  This does increase the server CPU resources required, however.   To minimize the load, it might be possible to simply remove a player from the chat channel if they were muted by someone else in it (or disallow players from muting players in a chat channel/inviting muted players to a channel).
  
  Heck, a combination of these techniques could be used...  a user's multiparty chat could broadcast to an Xbox Live server when they were in a game and directly to the players otherwise.  Slightly more complex but very bandwidth-efficient.
  
  In short, all the issues raised seem to be solvable problems.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  How is it done in PGR3?  I've been on with 8 people all chatting and racing online without any problem.  Is this using a central server acting as a VoIP conference bridge?  Technically, there is no reason this can't be done, it just may take up resources on XBox Live's servers, and maybe Microsoft doesn't want to do that.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  ok good enough but now lets talk about features you guys(the users) want implemented. Like the music player it needs a forward and rewind function. You need to let us do something while downlaoding content and for godsakes my xbox live page is blank no new news like "Game X is coming out!" or "mystrey  gamerr on tonight" and a featred downlaods page its a lot of blank real estate and maybe you guys should put a web browser on it!
  

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  It makes sense, but it would still be a nice feature.  I'd love to be able to chat with even just two of my friends.  I mean, you could issue a warning stating it could cause interweb slowdown, but most would probably ignore anyway...
  
  I think T1 could handle multiple chat users :-)

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Yes, please, please Dash-only or DVD-only multiparty chat.  And non-gaming activity during a Live download is an absolute must!  A download queue would be awesome too.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  to me this isn't even the main problem...why can't you add a prefrence to turn off auto play.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  Even if we just got 4 player chat off the Dashboard it would help immensely.  Thisis a MUST HAVE feature for people who organzie their play for the night with a group of friends.
  
  We also would use the xbox 16 person rooms during E3 and major announcements.
  
  Please put me down as another vote for putting it back in in some fashion.
  
  Major Fan

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  i think it will be a great option to have mutiple chats and talking with more then 4.
  
  you got my vote.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  One thing to remember is that the 300+K up and say 2 meg down, is max speed in most cases not consitent speed. This can drop quite often.
  
  On top of this 64K is ISDN speed so I guess makes a decent base to work on.
  
  Having a low imposed limit for a non host player forces tighter network programming and utilisation of bandwidth, hence, in theory more people in a single game.
  
  That aside, either a dash board update to add a multi way chat to one of the blades or the idea of Xbox Live Arcade "ChatMania" is really an essential feature. I really would hope that either the camera video chat application alows multi chat or if not some other indie developer is thinking "Ah lets write a multi chat app" for live arcade.
  
  I'd quite happily throw 400 points or so at a downloadable app, and I bet the majority of 360 live users would end up doing the same. A million or so 400 point purchases appearing all at once would be a nice income for some small indie team. Of course there would be the worry about the loss of camera sales, but that would apeal to people who don't want the video side or would just end up putting a picture from one of those top shelf mags infront to the camera to hide their face.
  
  (I would guess no one has thought seriously about the implications of video chat and using other "objects" than their face on screen. If they did the video camera probably wouldn't come out).
  
  If it wasn't so expensive to get up and running with 360 development, I'd get a team together and do it myself :-)

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 09, 2006
  if voice chat is 64kbps then why
  does it sound like a packet connect
  simular to oneway tin cans on a string.
  
  PTT sounds better than this.

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
  Even with skype i can talk with 4 people and downloading and play a game at the same time so why can't the 360 do the same. my xbox 360 is faster dan my pc.  
  It is just a minor update. The xbox team got the brains and the power to make it possible, and they did a great job with the new dashboard features but i still hope to see that we can chat with more then 4 people.

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
  i can see sony adding in this multichat feature with the ps3 as an overal package, so i hope ms some how releases this feature for free instead of charging for this feature in some kind of a feature update or hardware addon

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
  OK, maybe I'm confused.  In game, you can have a 16 player match, 8vs8.  8 people could be talking at once on your team and other data to transmit actual gameplay stuff.  All of this fits within 64kbps?  I would think the game data alone would exceed 64kbps.  Also if it doesn't, and you are substituting a voice chat of 8 (in game) for 1 through quickchat isn't there a bunch of bw left for 7 more people?  there is probably more going on that isn't explained in the blog which would cause it to make sense but, it was interesting to read.  

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
  I think the interface and the menu of the psp will be transformed to the PS3 system
  
  now on psp:
  Foto, video, games, music, web browser.
  Sony can make this available for the PS3
  
  What will be added to PS 3.
  
  example:
  Friendlist, multichat, single chat, live broadcasting, downloading media (movies, music, pictures), even conecting to you pc to see you own pictures, movies, music, without the media center 2005, video chat, maybe more.

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 11, 2006
  PingBack from http://www.gaming-360.com/?p=373

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2006
  How about a 360 Calendar online.
  
  Well, imagine that you would like to play PDZ tomorrow with some friends.
  Then you can send an invitation to all your requested attendees with the game you want to play and the hour of start.
  So people can see in their
  calendar (a day, a week or month), when there will be a team batlle or clan war or just a game among friends.
  
  The calendar can be something just like microsoft outlook.
  
  Greetz,
  Gamertag: Spike Bee
  Belgium
  

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2006
  this is bad news for ff11 fans.......sell your xbox 360 if multi chat is not added.........this is the only way big companies listen......

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2006
  While you're at it. Make it so if you double press the Xbox Guide button it accepts or quites current chat. It'd make things so much easier.

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2006
  I really appreciate you guys taking the time to post information about your internal thought process on this feature.  It at least tells us where you are coming from.
  
  I guess that I'm confused on some of the points that you make in here.  The thing that isn't clear from a technical side is how the chat scenario operates ingame versus quickchat.
  
  I seems clear to me that the QuickChat feature is a peer to peer feature and that the ingame voice chat is served by a server (the same one serving the game), but you don't specifically say this in your post.  
  
  If this is the case that it is peer to peer, it's obvious why you would not want to do multi-party chat from the QuickChat feature, as you each user would make (N - 1) connections (where N is the number of users) to the other players, which would result in a total of ((N-1) * N) connections total per chat session, although the only load per player would be the (N-1) connections to other players.
  
  I appreciate the fact that you are developing toward the lowest common denominator, giving players who might not have the best connection the same experience as others with faster connections, but I'm sure a significant number of broadband users have connections in excess of 128Kbps.  I, personally, have never paid more than $40 per month since 1999 for broadband internet service and have never had less than 1500Kbps.
  
  Given that the majority of users are most-likely well above the conservative estimate of 64Kbps, wouldn't it be prudent to allow this feature to be available to users as long as they get a warning that participating in multiparty chats might degrade overall performance?
  
  Again, thanks for the clarification.  And thanks for listening to our requests.  I look forward to future posts.

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2006
  ^ Spot the mathematician ^ :P

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2006
  Am I missing something here? Having a quick Multichat 'game' (live arcade item as mentioned) would seem to solve all the issues you descibe in one go - a basic lobby listing gamertags (16-32 tops?) where everyone could chat and join like with the original Xbox.
  
  Seems a no brainer.
  
  Think about it and add bells and user experience whistles later - just go make up a lobby with chat in the sdk (maybe you can visit Game Studios and nick some lobby code) certify it up and get it online. Keep it simple and get it in our hands within a month. Better something than nothing.
  
  Sorted.

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2006
  Being able to "white board" in a game style lobby might also be pretty cool, like being able to draw (might be hard with the controller instead of a mouse?) on to a big shared-workspace on the screen. Just think of the possibilities, you could do noughts-and-crosses, the sticks game where you draw lines between dots, all sorts of things.
  
  Having said that, I'll settle for just multi user chat. Anything else would be a bonus.

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2006
  even skype is 1 on 1 / peer to peer
  even in a meeting mode with 5 people it's stil peer to peer.
  Keep in mind that the host of the conference (the person who started the conference) is the only person that can add new participants. In addition, because Skype conferences are done Peer-to-Peer
  
  so like skype you can call 1 on 1
  like quickchat right.
  
  oke i want to invite someone to that chat i can becuase skype let me do that peer to peer
  but the xbox 360 can't/won't do that
  

• Anonymous
  February 14, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  "We are pretty smart when we need to be." - On the contrary, many of the people I play don't understand what "MY MINE IS HERE, DO NOT STAND ON IT" means.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  Don't get me wrong, it was nice to post this subject shaheeng, but aren't you going to respond to any points people made?

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  there is a way to see if people have a bad, good, or great connection that tells us when
  
  bad=red
  good=yellow
  great=green
  
  so we know from our friends how the connection is when we are going into multi chat.
  
  Even in games with connection in bad=red i can still talk and play together (some times lag some times not) but it tells me how his/her connection is and if i wanna chat or play with that team/guy/girl, thats my choice.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  I do not have a very fast internet connection (2mb). Even when I was running 1mb or 512k I could easily play online pc games and have a skype conference open as well... I have friends that are constantly downloading, they do not have to stop this to use xbox live, imagine how much bandwidth that is using up?!
  
  

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  I agree with everyone here that multichat needs to be here. It was so annoying and difficult just to get three people into one game of COD2.
  
  With Q4, we can all be in a lobby and talk and then join a game together, that was nice.
  
  I too would like to see this function in the dashboard. Please, do not make it a live arcade only function, because I want to be able to chat while in Media Center, downloading games, whatever. Please add multichat.

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Part 2, by the way, I do REALLY like all that we can do with the 360. Great job! I just didn't want the first post to seem too negative. Thanks.

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 17, 2006
  Hey everyone.  I know people are looking to me to respond to the requests for having multiparty chat on Xbox 360.  Unfortunately, I am not allowed to comment on the existence of current or future work.  The feedback from the community is important to us and I promise that we take it very seriously.
  
  For people that are wondering "well, a game can do many people, why can't quick chat?"  The key point to take away is that Xbox can only assume there is 64kbps of bandwidth each way because that is our minimum as per our requirements.  The game could be using all of that for whatever purpose it wants - be it chat or otherwise.  Our requirements for games state that games at least have to have some chat functionality, which means Quick Chat may only really assume there is 1 talker worth of bandwidth.
  
  Finally, for people that are saying "Gamers aren't stupid - just let us figure that out.":  The people that are reading this blog are a lot more technically inclined that the average person using Xbox.  We considered that user experience and we rejected it early on because we want Xbox to be consistent.  Video game consoles Just Work(TM) and we don't want to change that any more than we have to.
  

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2006
  Shaheeng, we do very much appreciate your commentary on this. To be honest, the first time I even noticed the limitation was whilst playing Final Fantasy XI. My house has three XBox 360s in it [if you're wondering why you can't get hold of them... now you know ;)] and we all play the FFXI Beta, but it's irritating having to exclude someone from the full enjoyment of the party system just because they can't communicate with the other two.
  
  Surely there could be two varieties of chat, Private Chat which is the same as we have now, and Group Chat which explicitly warns the user of the higher bandwidth requirements?

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2006
  Ive yet to buy a 360 everyone I know has one. All my friends say it's the best.We very much appreciate  the Xbox development team and Xbox Live team.There's something to be said about the power of Xbox Live to bring people together. Think you Xbox TEAM

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2006
  ok

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 20, 2006
  and why another headset the one i have works fine even when i am talking with more people
  
  or the new headset is wireless

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2006
  Oh, sorry. "jason" beat me to it. I should've read all the comments more carefully. Sorry for my extra post.

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 21, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 22, 2006
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• Anonymous
  February 22, 2006
  yeah man
  

• Anonymous
  February 23, 2006
  There are also topics on xbox.com forums about this problem, are they developers to ? or are they the ones that really using the xbox 360 -> the community.
  
  It is possible with the cam or without it.

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2006
  It's pretty good

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 28, 2006
  Although the poster R1K may have been a bit harsh, his suggestion about allowing multi party chat in the dashboard only sounds like a good idea. Why wouldn't that be acceptable?

• Anonymous
  March 01, 2006
  Multiplayer chat during Dashboard (possibly except while downloading), DVD playback, or Singleplayer gaming is something I desperately want.  Please implement this.

• Anonymous
  March 29, 2006
  Sorry, it just isn't acceptable to not have this feature.  I think most people who use broadband for gaming understand capacity and will use the chat at their own risk/benefit.

• Anonymous
  April 03, 2006
  PLEASE UNCHAIN THE VOICE CHAT SO WE CAN USE IT. WE WILL NOT HURT OURSELVES. LET US TRY.

• Anonymous
  April 06, 2006
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• Anonymous
  April 12, 2006
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• Anonymous
  April 15, 2006
  Please give us Multiparty Chat!!!

• Anonymous
  April 16, 2006
  There is still no excuse for not having a traditional Dashboard Chat on Xbox 360's Dashboard.
  
  Oh wait... maybe Microsoft wants to make up some bull**** excuse about that one too, so they can sell it back to us?
  
  

• Anonymous
  April 20, 2006
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• Anonymous
  April 23, 2006
  would you like to chat on the net?
  download many chat tools at http://www.yaodownload.com/internet-tools/chat/ to have a fun with other people!

• Anonymous
  April 27, 2006
  Guys they will give us Multichat for free when PS3 come out with this feature and I will cancel my gold member for live since I didn't see any use of it. FFXI didn't require a gold member and no server for handling multichat .

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2006
  this needs to happen.

• Anonymous
  May 05, 2006
  XBOX 360 - 300 pounds, couple of games - 100 pounds, the look on your face when you realise theres no multi-chat - priceless.
  
  Please can you re-think the update priorities. There are numerous sites listing countless complaints about the lack of this function, whereas, when one person thinks we should be able to chat from pc-xbox it's done.
  
  Are surveys carried out when deciding on what updates are most applicable and which would satisfy the largest majority of XBL subscribers?
  
  We put man on the moon, engineered the internal combustion engine, and discovered the science behind flight, but it beats me why we cannot get 8 people chatting to one another on a 21st century next gen gaming console.

• Anonymous
  May 23, 2006
  Please add multi party chat.  I'd rather be able to coordinate with my group of friends in a game then hearing a bunch of kids yelling and screaming.
  
  I agree that it should be a choice and maybe it's only a choice if you select a higher bandwidth option.  I also agree that maybe it doesn't make sense to allow a 10 person chat, but there are a lot of games where 3 or 4 people in a private chat really makes sense.

• Anonymous
  May 26, 2006
  It doesnt seem like its that difficult why dont you just do it?

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2006
  about going out with people

• Anonymous
  June 01, 2006
  hey everybody

• Anonymous
  June 07, 2006
  I cannot believe that microsoft hasent given us a multiple chat option. I know over a hundred people that feel completely gutted the lack of this vital feature, Maybee we wouldent feel so bad if the "in game" voice on games weve paid 50 pounds for actually worked ie Bf2mc and farcry . So please microsoft make it a requirement for game suppliers to release fully working games or give us a dam multi chat option so we can get around these issues!

• Anonymous
  June 08, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 21, 2006
  I heard that you can do like a private chat with 3 people, its like a trick but im still trying to find out how, but i think there is a way!.

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 24, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 25, 2006
  it sound nice

• Anonymous
  July 04, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2006
  I think this whole thing just sounds like straight up communism. I currently have a 3 mbps connection with wicked upload speed, so my question is, why should I have to suffer for the others who  have slower connections than me? this "consistent experience on Xbox Live," makes no sense because people will allways have differeing bandwidths. I'm not having a "consistent experience" when i don't lag durring a game and others do, and the same should apply to the multi user chat. Sure some people may not be able to use it, but why not make it available to those of us that can!?

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2006
  Don't let this one slip guys. Keep the pressure up and a solution will have to present itself.
  
  There is no excuse for not allowing multi-chat in the dashboard. Whoever left this off should give themselves an uppercut.
  
  You would think that they would want to encourage their arcade experience - no better way to do that than through enabling multichat.

• Anonymous
  July 14, 2006
  The best suggestions / comments / questions I have gotten out of this are as follows.
  
  1. dashboard only multichat.... why not they did it with xbox
  
  2. 64k gimme a break, i sneeze faster than 64k, Mr. Spoc said it best
  "the will of the MANY outweighs the will of the few or the 1".
  
  3. Betcha PS3 will have multichat (and if we dont they will shove it in our faces)
  
  4. CHROMEHOUNDS ROCKS... i know its a little off topic.. but at least im being honest... :)

• Anonymous
  July 18, 2006
  i gest want to chat

• Anonymous
  July 18, 2006
  i gest want to chat

• Anonymous
  July 18, 2006
  i gest want to chat

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 22, 2006
  PingBack from http://arne360.com/blog/2006/02/09/multi-user-chat-over-xbox-live/

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  This is still an incredibly important feature.  Like everyone else has said in this post, we don't care what it takes, but please make this feature happen.
  
  Allow us the option of deciding how much bandwidth we want to use.  If the game degrades, so be it.
  
  And we need to be able to do this in games as well.  I want to be chatting with my 4 friends while playing Battlefield 2.  The built in voice chat allows you to chat with everyone on your team, but I only want to talk with my friends.
  
  This has been accomplished with tons of other systems/PC..  there is no reason it cannot be accomplished here.

• Anonymous
  September 22, 2006
  This feature is a MUST!
  
  We've been using programs like TeamSpeak and Ventrilo for years along with PC multiplayer games. Why is it that we did not have bandwidth issues... with the very same internet connection??  And with greater sound quality than the XBL voice chat? And sometimes with 8+ peoples???  
  
  Even after reading this... I don't see any logical reason not to add this feature... If it can be done for PC.. and for the first XBox... it needs to be done again and improved.. not simply taken out....  
  
  We need to have to possibility to chose how much person we want to chat with at the same time. So what if it affects our online gaming? We can decide if it's ruining the experience for us and leave the chat, or the game when it does.
  

• Anonymous
  October 05, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 18, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 18, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 18, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 19, 2007
  I have to agree with the previous posts.  Please make this happen.  We know it is possible and YOU know it is possible.

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2007
  As if anyone can play games using 64kbs Up or even Down. Why not just make Party Chat only available in Dashboard, or Arcade games?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2007
  mmm.. nice design, I must say..

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2007
  Chi ha fatto questo? E un buon posto per trovare le informazioni importanti!:)

• Anonymous
  April 08, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2007
  Ich erklare meinen Freunden uber diese Seite. Interessieren!

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2007
  Stupore! Amo questo luogo!:)))))))

• Anonymous
  June 07, 2007
  PingBack from http://www.quandoz.com/?p=104

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2008
  A common complaint about the Xbox 360 dashboard is the lack of the multi-person chats that were available

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2008
  PingBack from http://interscription.com/2008/04/11/two-years-later/

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2008
  PingBack from http://damianlatestnews.freeadsensehost.com/xboxliveteamchat.html