I just randomly saw news that nearly a week ago Xbox support announced they’re closing closing clubs in April. If I missed a post then feel free to delete this one, because this feels like a fairly big deal that completely flew out of my radar. And that’s kinda the point. I’m actually surprised the clubs held on this long. They’re such a weird stunted community feature. Ultimately, I don’t think platform specific community creation tools that can sustain themselves especially when there’s the option for direct discord integration and Discord can be accessed on anything. The only platform forum that I think has been really successful like this is Steam and that feels like it’s because you can access it through the web browser and Steam app. As a pure console experience social clubs for video games just felt too… limited by the boundaries of the console.
I do hope that “looking for group” never goes away even as someone that never uses it. I would also love Xbox to seriously revisit social features in games and across their ecosystem. They could be doing a lot more that has reach outside of Xbox. I don’t use Steam a lot, but I still go to Steam’s forums even for games I own on Xbox to see people’s guides and check out patch notes or other developer updates. It feels like this speaks to what Xbox is doing in general: we aren’t in the time where gaming can succeed with communities that have artificial walls placed around them.
Windows Central article as well. I’m not sure how much people care despite clubs having been around a long while. The windows central poll has the vast majority saying they never used it. I remember Jez having rumors of Xbox exploring something like a Battle net social hub for all their game and ecosystem experiences across devices and platforms. That’d be interesting. I think whatever happens can’t be tied down to a singular hardware experience. Heck maybe building out the social hub is what really makes cloud gaming take off. Make it something fun that feels engaging at every level.