While Microsoft previously tried a price hike for Xbox Live, only to roll it back and drop Xbox Live subscriptions for free-to-play games. Now, they’re making Xbox Party Chat free by dropping Xbox Live subscriptions for one of the classic online feature.
The news comes via Xbox Preview Program developer Brad Rosetti, who confirmed the Xbox Live subscription being dropped for Party Chat is being rolled out to users on their Xbox Insider users in the Alpha Skip Ahead and Alpha programs. Once the functionality is deemed ready for the public, they’ll roll it out to “general availability.”
This means eventually anyone with an Xbox will be able to hop in a Party Chat with any of their friends, regardless of having an Xbox Live subscription – a standard feature Windows PC gamers have been enjoying for decades. In comparison, Sony isn’t keen to doll out free functionality and Nintendo has barely adopted online feature parity for their paid online suite.
We recently learned that Microsoft is reportedly in talks to acquire PC chat app Discord for $10 billion, which makes sense considering this new move to offer group voice chat to all their users, for free. If they do acquire Discord, integrating Xbox Party Chat to the platform would combine the two ecosystems and userbases.
Microsoft is making a number of changes to their Xbox Live online suite, even going so far as to rename the service to the Xbox Network – after nearly two decades. They’re also adding tons of games to Xbox Game Pass every month – in an effort to get everyone onto Xbox, whether its on an Xbox console or a PC.
