The feature has been hinted at for a while, but for those of us either using the Xbox Windows 10 beta app or in the Xbox One Preview, you can now message groups of friends for the first time.
Historically, messages on Xbox Live were only between two people, and this latest update joins Clubs, Beam and Looking For Group as part of a major social push for the platform.
Here are the details as posted on the Xbox Preview Forums. You will need the Xbox Windows 10 beta app to access the features if you're not part of the Xbox One Preview. Preview members can simply perform a hard reset to activate group messaging.
Group Messaging
- Message your friends like never before with Group Messaging, now available on the Xbox One and the PC Xbox app! Start a new thread with multiple people in the same conversation or share activity feed content to existing conversations. NOTE: To use Group Messaging on PC you will need to download the latest version of the Xbox (beta) app (22.21.28005.0). You may need to visit the Store to download the latest version.
Things to Try:
- Message friends about anything and everything!
- Share activities, achievements, game clips, and screenshots with others.
- Create new group conversations (just select more than one person when creating a new message).
- Create group conversations from 1 on 1 conversations (just select "Add more people").
- Change the topic of your conversation in the conversation list.
- Add people to a conversation.
- Leave a conversation.
- Delete a conversation.
- Mute or unmute a conversation to stop or start receiving notifications.
- Select "View people" to view everyone participating in a conversation.
- If possible, redeem codes or launch websites from Xbox Live service messages.
Group Messaging Known Issues:
- People who don't have access to Group Messaging (non-Preview users) will see your messages later.
- You may see a jump in your unread message count. To resolve this, navigate to those conversations to mark them as read (they'll be near the end of your conversations list).
- When receiving voice messages and shared feed content messages from another user, you may not receive a notification.
- Xbox One users may need to perform a hard reset (hold down the power button for five seconds until the console fully powers down, then power back on) for Group Messaging to be visible. After 24 hours this will no longer be necessary.
The Xbox dev team are showing no signs of slowing down on injecting new features into the platform, heaping additional value onto the service used by almost 50 million gamers.
