If you been wondering & waiting for a feature that will put a wow factor to the Xbox One & Windows 10 Gamer community, its about time. In the recent update to Xbox One Preview, Microsoft has taken their first major step to bring the PC & Console community together. The feature is called as “Clubs” which allows gamers to form a virtual community, stay connected and do all sort of cooperative activity using the Xbox Live Service.
Xbox Clubs
What is so interesting about Clubs is that they aren’t restricted on certain topics or games. You can create a club around almost anything, all you need is an idea that works for you, and the likeminded persons. You can have a club around a particular game, may be only to showcase achievements or even a club where only your friend gamers are invited or even a hidden club which nobody knows about.
List of Features:
- Lets members post so everyone can see it in the feed.
- Chat between members.
- If you have enough trusted people, you an even let members invite others.
- Create Parties.
- Clubs can have tags like Communication requirements, play style, Age restrictions and so on.
- Supports Background Images, option to change colour, change profile pic.
- You can also add games which you prefer to play. These games are picked up from the Xbox One Store.
How to Create an Xbox Live Club
- Switch to Community Tab, and select Clubs on Xbox
- Its basically an app which allows you to create clubs, discover and join.
- Now select Create a Club, and select club type.
- When naming a club, you have to very specific. You cannot rename, and the clubs cannot be deleted just like gamertags.
- You can choose between Public, Private and Hidden. You can create max of 3 Public and Private Clubs, while there can be 100 hidden club you can choose to create.
- Public : It can be searched, and request can be sent to get an invite. All the activities are also public.
- Private : These clubs are searchable, but they are strictly invitation based. The feeds are also members only.
- Hidden: Nobody can search for it. Only those who are invited can join it.
- Once done, and if the club name is available, you can choose details like Background Image, Profile pic, colour, and also associate it with games. All these information can be edited later on.
Clubs is definitely a great push for Microsoft’s Play Anywhere feature, and will bring gamers from Console and PC together.
How to Find a Club ?
While you are on Clubs section, there is an option “Find a club” which lets you find a club which suits you. You can search a club based on its name, description or using a game by selecting choose games option.
IMO, searching for groups is rather limited right now as the tags are missing. For example, I would be ore interested to join a club which doesnt uses mic, but there is no way to search for those clubs.
Looking For Group
Also termed as LFG in short, this helps you find like minded players to play a particular game, and then pursue whatever you intended to which could be weekly quest or getting help to unlock an achievement. The best part of LFG is support for tags, and achievements which is missing in Find a Club option.
- The easiest way to get started with Looking for Group is to open the Parties tab on the Guide.
- You can browse and search a game’s LFG posts on its Game Hub. Choose from your games by clicking the “Looking for Group” button on the Parties tab of the Guide.
- When you Host or request to join an LFG, you can find it in the “Upcoming” list on the Parties tab of the Guide. The Parties tab will also show you LFG posts your friends have made.
- If you’re the leader of a party and need more players, you can also create a Looking for Group post directly from the Party roster.
It is also possible to send your LFG request in an existing club which lets you start a party from that group itself. It is also possible to do it from Game HUB.
That said, all these features making their way to Xbox Live, Microsoft is brining features that was only provided by third part sites like True Achievements and others. This is definitely much better because it is baked into the system, and will enable both PC gamers and Console gamers to come under one platform.
