Xbox Party Chat is free and will be part of Xbox Live free-to-play: Microsoft
Xbox Party Chat, multiplayer in free-to-play games, will be free for Xbox owners soon, Microsoft announced on Wednesday.
The software maker has started testing a new Xbox dashboard update with testers that unlocks Xbox Party Chat and the ‘Looking for Groups’ feature.
Xbox Party Chat is a surprise addition to Microsoft’s announced plans to remove the paywall for free-to-play multiplayer games.
The removal came after Microsoft was forced to reverse a price hike to its Xbox Live Gold subscriptions earlier this year.
Brad Rossetti tweets…
Xbox Insiders in Alpha Skip Ahead & Alpha today we are flighting some new features. Multiplayer in Free-to-play games, Looking 4 Groups and Party Chat on Xbox no longer requires an Xbox Live Gold membership as we flight and test these service changes ahead of general availability
— Brad Rossetti (@WorkWombatman) March 24, 2021
Xbox testers can now access multiplayer free-to-play games like ‘Fortnite’ without needing an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
This puts Xbox in line with Sony and Nintendo’s online services that also don’t require a subscription for free-to-play games.
These changes will appear for all Xbox owners in the coming months, once Microsoft is ready to push this dashboard update out to all users.
