Instant Messenger/Voice chat

Xfire’s instant messenger has all the standard IM features, but no offline message system. It has compatibility for AIM, MSN, and Twitter connectivity, which is pretty impressing. It’s voice chat is of lower quality than Skype and Mumble, but higher than Steam, TeamSpeak, and Ventrilo. It has support for group chats with up to 50 people.

Game Selection and Sales

Xfire was not originally made to be a platform for selling games, but when Viacom/MTV bought it they tried very hard to sell a few games, but got almost no sales, so they sold it to Titan Gaming. Titan wants to make Xfire more of a platform for selling games, like Steam, but for now they haven’t changed anything (just a note, it looks like Titan will be very indie friendly). With this all being said, at the moment of this post, games on Xfire are all sold for retail price, but the Xfire community heavily embraces free to play games, many of which you can download via Xfire.

Community

The people on Xfire are very fun and exciting. There are always trolls in every community, but even they get hyped up when an event is being planned by the Xfire team. There are often prize events in free to play games for players or groups that play so many hours, as well as live interviews with developers. The forums are always heavily used.

Group are everywhere on Xfire, and starting one is easy. Once you get one friend, there is a friends-of-friends list on your IM list, where you can add friends of friends, then once you add them you can add even more, and you can invite them all to your group. Groups on Xfire aren’t very professional due to the lowest average age (14 seems to be average) I’ve seen on any gaming platform, but they are fun.

Overlay

Xfire’s overlay is simply amazing. With it you can:

• Take screenshots
• Take in-game video
• Message others
• See your FPS
• Browse the internet
• Use voice chat like you would out of game
• Control your media player
• Server browser
• Game Laucher

and probably even more that I don’t know about. All videos and screenshots can be uploaded to Xfire and displayed on your group’s homepage.

Overall Quality

Xfire is a no-budget group’s dream. It has everything a gaming group needs to communicate, function and have fun. It’s overlay allows for in-game group conversations and calls, as well as a way to record your finest moments and show them to your friends. Of course, Xfire’s downfall is that if you use a third part website, voicechat, or forum the point of having Xfire is halfway removed, and that in its near future it will be heavily monotized. Hopefully Titan Gaming knows what they are doing and gives us a ton of cheap games instead of Xfire’s current list of a few expensive games.

You can get Xfire at http://www.xfire.com/

[18:30] Xfire was bought by new owners today. Most of the team that has built Xfire over the last six years is leaving. We enjoyed working for you for the last 127 releases and wish we could stay to create the next 127. Good bye, good luck, and game on. — The Xfire Team

That was the following message I received at 6:30 PM today. So for 6 years Xfire has been running off it’s original owners. Today they were bought out by new owners, as specified above. So the main news on Xfire.com says the following:

August 2, 2010–Titan Gaming acquires Xfire.

Titan will be taking on the Xfire name, with a focus towards ongoing innovation in the gaming space. The Xfire services will continue uninterrupted for its users. Xfire redefined how gamers communicate, Titan intends to build upon this tradition and utilize the Xfire platform to help gaming companies better engage their users. We look forward to continuing and expanding upon the Xfire service.

So basically, we’l all be fine when it comes to launching our favorite games from xfire, and talking to friends from xfire’s AIM, Twitter, Yahoo!, Windows Live Messenger, and Google Chat “Social Network Manager”. We hope to see great changes in he near future to xfire, but nothing to worry about, things are supposed to only get better.

Also, if you think that Viacom (MTV) bought out Xfire, you are wrong. Viacom, which is also MTV Networks, originally owned xfire BEFORE it was bought out by Titan gaming. The following is the Viacom website, you can see on the left all of the things that Viacom owns. Also, Viacom was not the creator of Xfire, they bought them out in 2006: http://www.viacom.com/ourbrands/Pages/default.aspx