Xbox live chat via the Xbox 360 interface is not the all-singing all-dancing communication portal that we’d all hoped for. Indeed Bill gates himself told us that ‘"Video game players want to be able to chat with their buddies”, so why is the Xbox 360 so ineffective when it comes to communication?

The problem is that the Xbox 360 interface does not allow you to speak to multiple gamers at one time, although the Xbox does. As far as I’m concerned Microsoft have took a backwards step with the communication aspect of the Xbox 360 and stripped away the excellent dashboard function that appears on the original.

Via the Xbox dashboard we’d meet up with other clans before matches, have clan meetings, discuss tactics, or just gather all our friends together in one place for a chat. Unless you all have the same game, we can no longer do this on the Xbox 360 and many clans rely on creating their own websites to chat. It’s true that we can all jump on the same game and meet in a lobby, but some games have appalling lobby systems and many clans have different teams for different games, meaning we now rely on our own websites to communicate effectively.

In the build up to the launch of the Xbox 360 myself, my clan and many other clans thought that we’d see an expansion of the voice chat lobbies on the Xbox but have been left extremely disappointed. Via the Xbox 360 interface we can now only chat to one person at a time and have to switch between different channels to speak with more than one person. We used to have 16 people in the same room and it was a chance to get to know our ‘invisible’ friends and form a team bond.

The games that have appeared so far on the Xbox 360 have created a split between many clans. There isn’t one game that really attracts every single member of some of the larger clans, but instead we’re all playing different games. On the Xbox this wasn’t a problem, we’d hold meetings and make sure we all kept in touch via the dashboard, but now we can’t due to the limited functionality of the Xbox 360 dashboard.

Of course the Xbox 360 has many unique features which we love, but what we considered to be a crucial social aspect that brought many gamers and teams closer together on the Xbox is no longer available and we miss it.

I thought the Xbox 360 would open up the possibility of holding meetings via the dashboard with multiple users, but it doesn’t. Myself and many other clans are hoping that Microsoft improve the voice chat lobby sooner rather than later.