Xbox Live Friends limit to be increased

By Ellie Gibson Published 12 January, 2009

"It's on the list," says Greenberg.

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has confirmed there are plans to increase the number of Friends you can have on Xbox Live.

"I can't commit to when that will happen, but that is something we want to do," he told Joystiq.

"It's definitely something we're looking at expanding and, as this social network grows, we've absolutely heard the please for that. It's on the list."

As you'll know if you're massively popular, you can't have more than 100 people on your Friends list at present. According to Greenberg, the system was designed like that back in the old days of the original Xbox - but now Live should allow for a bit more flexibility. Eventually.

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About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DFawkes #1 3 years ago

    More than 100? If I ever got even slightly close to 100, I'd trim out all the people don't play with, or like. My list is fine as is. Nice that they'll make it bigger for those who need a list full of people though.

  • Toothball #2 3 years ago

    Still haven't filled up my current list, and I'm thinking of having a prune anyway. More can only be an advantage though.

  • Xerx3s #3 3 years ago

    Mine is constantly hoovering around a 100 and it's annoying but then again, if they up the limit it will be hoovering around that limit in no time as well so I don't see a point in it really.

    What would be far more beneficial is the ability to have something like cross game clans or groups. That way you would just need to sign up to a group and presto, the people in that group would automatically be in you list (without actually being in your list). That way you would also be able to sort your friends.

    At least 80 people on my list are EG people, if we had an "EG group", I would only need 20 slots. Another advantage is that everybody in the group always has up to date access to all other members. It also opens up new gameplay possibilities such as clan games.

    Obviously a person would have to be able to join more than one group.

  • LazyDan #4 3 years ago

    100 people? Christ the sign-in notifications would get annoying... You'd have no option but to turn them off, surely.

  • Lutz #5 3 years ago

    Same here Xerx3s, I even culled mine back down to 94 t'other day!

  • JHuxley #6 3 years ago

    Are they going to rename it a 'People That I Know' list?

  • kinky_mong #7 3 years ago

    I try and trim mine so it's around the 30 mark anyway. It's a pain trawling through a long list when you want to get to the W's.

  • Kazzahdrane #8 3 years ago

    Xerx3s: When they added the "See friends of friends" feature to Live some clans and groups made a Live account for the group, then everyone adds it as a friend. As long as that group account is set to publicly display its friends then everyone in the clan/group can see which members are on by checking the friends of that account.

    I didn't explain that very well but I'm sure you get the idea. Not perfect at all and I agree groups would be great ala Steam Friends but you work with what you have I guess.

  • chrisjm #9 3 years ago

    would be good to have 2 types as well, 1 like now with all alerts, another where you only recieve alerts if they are online in the same game as you.

  • DrDamn #10 3 years ago

    Would be nice to be able to manually group people together too.

  • systems #11 3 years ago

    Why don't they just add bloody clan support. Then we wouldn't need a 100 friend list.

  • Xerx3s #12 3 years ago

    Kazzahdrane: Yeah I know, I have one as well but it's a hack solution. MS needs to implement a decent solution. It also needs to get off it's arse and provide the ability to sort people on your into groups the way msn does. Browsing through a 100 (or more) people takes ages but if you're split them in friend groups and minimised them, it would only take a second.

    Live is for a large part about social networking so it's sort of baffling to see that it's functionalities in that respect are so handicapped. Especially when you see that such basic functionalities have been standard in other products for ages.

    EDIT: What DrDamn said.
    Edited by Xerx3s at 12/01/09 @ 10:45

  • dr_swin #13 3 years ago

    "we've absolutely heard the please for that"

    spell check please.

  • HiredMan #14 3 years ago

    My list has been full for over a year and a half and I play with almost all of them regularly. It's annoying when you try to do a cull and get heaps of messages back saying: "why'd you cut me?!"

    I hope they do this sooner rather than later.

  • agparrot #15 3 years ago

    Get a frickin move on!

    Have already culled some players I haven't played with for a while, but as each new game tends to bring a variety of new team-mates, it always pops back up to 100 straight away.

  • The_Programmer #16 3 years ago

    Mine is constantly hoovering around a 100....
    There's your problem. You should Dyson your Friends list. You should then be able to clear it out much better.

  • sneetch #17 3 years ago

    I have only one friend on Live. :(

    /cries

    Then again, he is an actual friend. Well, I say he's a friend but I don't really like the guy. At all. But if he reads this: you're completely awesome, man, best friend a guy could have!

    No you're not.

  • Steroyd #18 3 years ago

    @LazyDan

    Not neccesarily you'd be hard pressed to find all 100 people on your f list on at the same time I usually have about 10 - 15 people online every evening and sign ins/outs aren't annoyingly frequent.

    Why don't MS and Sony have an unrealistically high limit from the start? It's annoying when games have clan features and the cap is at 64 which gets filled fast if there's already a pre-built community.
    Edited by Steroyd at 12/01/09 @ 11:41

  • Ryze #19 3 years ago

    They've heard the pleas for that, then.

    They also want to look at the reasons why with a lot of friends on the list, navigating through the dash is so sluggish.

    Having a lot of friends is great, as it means that there's more often someone to invite to multiplayer games regardless of the time of day. As mentioned above, there are normally about 15 online at a time, or upto 25 or more during a busy time, ie GTA IV launch, Gears 2 launch etc.

    It's excellent having a large list.
    Edited by Ryze at 12/01/09 @ 13:34

  • Fab4 #20 3 years ago

    While I don't need it, I know people who do. For instance, in a site I'm a member off, one of the mods gets as many of the site members on his friend's list and then compiles Excel performance sheets for certain games over a period of time (say a month) and you can see how you are improving against your fellow member. Obviously this was limited by the 100 friends setting.

  • Toothball #21 3 years ago

    @kinky_mong:
    I try and trim mine so it's around the 30 mark anyway. It's a pain trawling through a long list when you want to get to the W's.

    Takes even longer to get to all the"XX XX"s and variants. Those guys are troublesome.

  • Listerofsmeg #22 3 years ago

    I don't think it's entirely necessary - who would play with 100 people anyway? I have a few good friends (around 10) that buy all the major game releases out so we'll play together anyway, then add/remove friends that I meet for various other games

  • sideeye #23 3 years ago

    Screw xbox, my 2nd console just died on me. I thought they fixed the problem on the elite console. If i ever see Bill Gates i'm gonna kick him so hard in his scrote that he will be tasting his own testicles for many years to come!

  • Bill Gates is Evil #24 3 years ago

    "we've heard the please for that"

    fail

  • bonker #25 3 years ago

    "we've absolutely heard the please for that"

    I literally, physically cringed when I read that ...

    Seriously EG, get it the fuck together already.

  • StigR #26 3 years ago

    "we've absolutely heard the please for that"

    The source article says "the pleas" so I guess its the spellcheck that failed..

  • Ryze #27 3 years ago

    @sideeye

    The fixed the problem on the FALCON console, not on the Elite. I have my neighbour's RROD'd Elite right here as he's asked for help with sorting it.

    It's a 203w Zephyr, manufactured June 07. I'm not surprised it RROD'd because prior to the Falcon (manuf'd Autumn '07) it was common knowledge that the consoles were overheating and dying.

  • mukki #28 3 years ago

    cool!

    but wait I dont have any xbox live friends!

    shheeeet....