Xbox Live might be getting a larger party chat if Xbox’s head of programming Mike Ybarra has anything to do with it. The executive recently commented in an interview on how he would like to increase the party chat size even more to accommodate players for Battlefield and MMO raids.
“It was 8 six months ago, then we went to 12, now we’re at 16,” Ybarra said in an interview with Game Informer. “I’d love to get that to 64 because that’ll get Battlefield and games like that which do 64 vs. 64”
Ybarra said that the upgrade would also help PC players as well. “I like raising that – especially on the PC where a lot of our gamers use the Xbox app with non-Xbox Live games because you get free party chat,” he says. “So if you’re in World of Warcraft and you have a 20-person raid, we’re seeing a lot of people loading the Xbox app, getting into big parties as their client for how they talk and they go in. I want to raise that number to make sure I’m satisfying the Windows side and their needs as well.”
Currently the PS4’s party chat is limited to 8 players, which is what the Xbox One launched with back in 2013. Last September Microsoft increased the party size to 12 in their New Xbox One Experience update. Xbox One players will have to wait a little bit longer to use the 16 person party chat as it will be available in the March update that drops later this month.
Source: Game Informer via EGMNOW