Xbox is Bringing Back Friend Requests to the Social Experience

Microsoft is planning to change the Xbox social experience and bring back the friend requests from the Xbox 360 era. However, the followers experience introduced on the Xbox One 11 years ago won’t be going away.

Xbox Insiders on the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring and Windows 11 users enrolled in the PC Gaming preview can now try the new Xbox friends and followers experience. Overall, it will still be possible to follow anyone on the Xbox network to see what they’re sharing publicly, but as the Xbox team explained, “Friends are now a two-way, invite-approved relationship.”

As of today, “friends” on the Xbox network are two people that follow each other. However, adding new friends will soon require users to send a formal friend request. “You’ll stay friends with people who had also added you as a friend previously and continue following anyone who hadn’t,” the Xbox team explained.

With the new friends and followers experience on Xbox, users will be able to see pending friend requests from the Xbox guide, accept or delete them, and send friend requests to other people. Microsoft is also adding new privacy and notification settings to let gamers decide who can follow them or send them friend requests.

During the Xbox One era, Microsoft tried to make what was still called “Xbox Live” a more social experience where anyone is encouraged to share their gaming activity outside of their gaming circle. However, Microsoft now seems to be de-emphasizing these Xbox social features (game clips and screenshots uploaded to the Xbox network are now deleted after 90 days) while doubling down on its partnership with Discord.

With the recent August Xbox update, Microsoft better integrated Discord contacts into the Xbox OS. Xbox users can now see their Discord friends in their Friends list on the Xbox guide, and they can also call them directly instead of using a semi-public voice channel.