And Xbox responds to Sony and its PlayStation 5 Pro with… friend requests

As you may already know, this week Sony announced the highly rumored PlayStation 5 Pro. The announcement, which has been very controversial due to the outrageous price, has generated a lot of buzz on social media and many comments on forums, expecting a response from Xbox and Nintendo, the other big companies in the industry.

And while Nintendo is about to announce the Nintendo Switch 2, the reality is that for now we don’t know anything. We only know that it will be presented during this fiscal year, so it could extend until the first quarter of 2025 without much problem. However, it wouldn’t be bad if Nintendo showed us the console and gave us a price (to start saving).

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As for Xbox, this is the one that has surprised us with an unexpected announcement. A novelty that may seem minor, but in the end it is a positive announcement for all of us who have and use an Xbox Series: friend requests are back to how they used to be.

Microsoft has announced the news through its official Xbox account on Twitter, stating that it plans to reintroduce the old friend request system.

A feature that disappeared during the Xbox 360 era is coming back

The screenshots accompanying the post show that there will be a menu within the “People” tab that will display sent and received friend requests. Players will also have the option to adjust friend requests through their privacy settings or disable the feature altogether if they prefer.

In the Xbox Wire post accompanying the news, it is explained that this friend request system is currently being tested in the Xbox Insider program for Alpha Skip-Ahead users specifically, and Xbox hopes to share more information about the full implementation of the feature at some point this year.

For those who are concerned about losing their friend lists when the update is made, Xbox assures in a later post that: “your mutual friends will be automatically updated with this change when we implement it. You will still be friends with the people who have added you as a friend before, and you will continue to follow those who haven’t.”

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Xbox also confirms that the follower system will continue to work as usual. However, friend requests will act as a “two-way approved invitation relationship”, giving players much more control over their Xbox common friends.

Good news from Xbox after the setback we had yesterday when we discovered that the new Game Pass Standard subscription will not have access to cloud gaming, Microsoft’s day 1 release games, and will also not enjoy about a quarter of the catalog.