Major Nelson addressed the friends list limit on his podcast last week. He said that the average XBL gamertag has around 25 friends, and then implied as long as the average is so low that it doesn't make sense to raise it.

Great! So the heavy users suffer at the sake of the light users! I'm paying for this service, mind you.

I thought the XBOX 360 was about social gaming. My list has been full since HALO 2.

Speaking of "social", I guess the same thing could be said about MySpace. The average user on there probably doesn't have but a dozen or so friends. But the users that are on there everyday generating ad revenue are the users with the most friends, sending the most messages. MySpace wouldn't be successful if they caps the total number of friends a person could have.

It looks like I'll be keeping a fresh install of Xfire on my system at all times. Until all XBOX games start displaying a list of public servers, then we are to rely on our buddylist system to get us into custom games. That discourages me from finding custom games.

My sentiments exactly. It's tough to work with only being able to have 100 friends...

If the friends list issue really impacts you guys, then I hope they increase the limit. Personally, I don't need an increase. I am also highly suspect whether anyone I know routinely plays with 100 different people. I may be wrong, but that's my opinion.

I would challenge everyone with a maxed out friends list to go to xbox.com and look at the last time each of your friends logged in. Of 60 friends, I have 5 that have nothing in the column of "last seen." I believe that means they haven't logged onto XBL in over 30 days. If someone is only on XBL once every 30 days, then by definition, you can't routinely game with them.

I'm a friends list cleaning nazi, and I've got 5 people on there that I don't routinely play with (because they are seldom seen THXers or they have alternate gamertags). How many friends do each of you have that haven't logged on in a month?

That doesn't even address the issue of friends that you constantly see online but are never playing what you are playing or don't respond to invites. I also suspect that some of you have friends on your list that are part of the video game development community and don't want to remove them even though you may seldom play with them.

As I said, if you guys really need it then I hope they increase the limit. I just can't empathize with you. My 02/100

I have a full friends list and I know every single person on my list. I don't have anyone on my list that I met online randomly with the exception of one or two (like JDogg and sparda's friend RedDuke who's only on my buddylist because he plays GoW). I have some kind of history with each person on my list from elsewhere - most of them from HALO PC, other forums, or IRC.

I have a few friends that haven't logged in in over 30 days. However, I find that they do still play. Several friends have been offline for months, but recently got a 360 and are online all the time in GoW. But, just the other day, I did trim 4 or 5 friends from the list because I haven't kept in contact with them and doubt they'll be coming back into my "cybersphere". I guess they got a life. Maybe the H3 beta or new H2 maps will bring them back online.

I'm hoping they do increase the limit. I had about 100 people that I played several hours a week with consistently in HALO PC. I knew them from my Ventrilo server and the HALO server. If I could have back then, I would have added most of them to my friends list leaving little room for the users that I want on my list that only play XBOX and XBOX 360. Assuming I play HALO 2 for Vista and surely other Live enabled games for Windows, I'll be out of space on my list in a flash.

Good points though, Midnight.

In broader reference to the original post, this is really cool. It moves the gaming console one step further towards the role of a living room computer.

Sounds like you definitely need an increase. I forgot to factor all the other places from which you've acquired online acquaintances. A quick count of my friends reveals that I befriended 20/60 randomly on XBL. If I play a game with someone who acts mature, communicates, and has at least mediocre playing ability, I usually send them a friend req. Buzz66, Dr Drip, and Redtusk are all examples of these types that I play with frequently (not that they're mediocre).

I agree with rapture on almost all points.

I just checked, and I have three friends who haven't played in the past thirty days. I routinely have ~20 people online at once. I try to be a Friends-List-Cleaning-Nazi, cleaning off the one or two people who I've met on XBL that I accept friend requests from, but that's not good enough.

I also don't clean off people that are upstanding members of the Halo community. That's a bunch of people, and it's a lot of fun to play with them.

I guess you guys are just far different than me. I don't know 100 people in the world that I like, much less on XBL, and much less 100 that like me in return.

I'm quite happy with my five friends on my friends list... your welcome rap for bringing down the average.

but seriously, I understand why they cap it, but doubling or tripling it shouldn't be out of the realm of feasibility. Hell, just allow people to set active and inactive lists of 100 people at a time. This would cut down on the number of requests to the servers and still allow for rap and mintz to be the social butterflies that they are.

I routinely trim my list, but it pretty much stays above 90 almost constantly. Almost all of those have been online in the last 30 days. :)

DJ

yo, the average gamertag does not have 25 friends on it....its full and we want more room, if you don't have a full friends list then u r a noob...my friends list was full the first week i got it and most of my friends were semi pros.....i would like to have a larger friends list and so would almost everyone else on live......noob.

yo

Major Nelson looks at statistics from the Xbox Live servers. He says the average gamertag has about 25 friends. I think I'll believe him and not you.

Your comment about someone being a noob if they do not have a full friends list is a narrowminded over-generalization. People like myself who prefer not to play with screaming, infantile 13 year olds (does that ring a bell?) do not befriend every gamertag they meet. Furthermore, someone has to communicate and act mature to get a friend request from me. I don't care if they're good--even a "semi-pro" (which I suspect is a monacre bestowed by you upon any of your friends that possess a vowel in their last name).

You and your friends do not necessarily represent the average demographic on XBL. For instance, my father and wife are both on XBL. They probably have about 5 and 10 friends respectively. Different people spend their time on XBL in different ways.

Look beyond yourself and try to see the larger picture.