XFire Hits 8 Million Users, Releases Bevy of Stats

GamesIndustry.biz notes that the popular PC communication service XFire has reached the startling mass of 8 million users. XFire users don't pay a fee to use the service, of course, but with some 40% of those gamers coming from North America that represents about 3.2 million players here in the states. They also let fly with some interesting statistics, gathered from their teeming masses: "According to the details based on activity across the month of August, taken almost entirely from PC game-playing data, World of Warcraft logged over 440,000 hours of gameplay on average per day. This was followed by Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer and Counter-Strike: Source, on 173,355 and 158,714 average hours respectively. The second most popular MMO was Guild Wars, logging 59,199 average hours per day, while Eve Online was sixth most popular MMO, and Lord of the Rings Online came 8th."

Great product

[Corpuscavernosa]

Although it's unfortunate that it's main use seems to be 13 year old boys calling each other "fag".

Re:

[SirSlud]

Thats considered a pretty eloquent conversation by xbox live standards.

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[Anonymous Coward]

xFire != Xbox live. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised...all fanbois are idiots.

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[Captain Splendid]

fag

World of Warcraft's voice integration

[beef curtains]

I wonder how the integrated voice chat in WoW's upcoming patch will affect the adoption of Xfire's beta voice chat feature.

Also, I'm probably the wrong demographic for Xfire (as kids these days seem to be able to multi-task with the chatting, texting, gaming, etc. all at the same time like nobody's business), but I can't seem to discover the secret to actively playing a game while IMing multiple friends...that'd be a one way ticket to the graveyard for me.

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[Endo13]

If you play online PC games, you're the right demographic for XFire. Xfire is not about public chat rooms, it's about having an IM app that lets you chat with your gaming buddies, see what game they're playing, chat with them in-game without minimizing/tabbing/etc., and - depending on the game - hop into the same game with them. Of course now you can also create chat rooms (which can only be accessed by receiving an invite from someone already in the room), do VOIP chat, and even group VOIP chat by creating

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[ben there...]

I wonder how the integrated voice chat in WoW's upcoming patch will affect the adoption of Xfire's beta voice chat feature.

Even without that, most (at least competitive) gamers are already using Teamspeak or Ventrilo for voice chat. It's already a crowded market, but I guess if Xfire has any compelling features, a one-stop solution might convince many to ditch TS.

...but I can't seem to discover the secret to actively playing a game while IMing multiple friends...that'd be a one way ticket to the graveyard for me.

At least with FPS games, you usually have time to type when you respawn. But clans use voice chat exclusively for coordinating strategy while in battle for that reason, and because it is often much easier and quicker to convey information by speaking.

Silkroad Online

[Punko]

I could be wrong, but Silkroad appears to be the highest ranked game that is free to play.

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[vio]

I could be wrong, but Silkroad appears to be the highest ranked game that is free to play.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is also a free game (was released in 2003 for free - from day-1). Not sure how it ranks overall, but today it seems to be ahead of Silkroad.

Linux client?

[9mm Censor]

There still isn't an official one, anyone have any lucking getting any x-fire messaging working from linux?

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[pieaholicx]

As far as I'm aware there was a plugin that ran on GAIM (possibly Pidgin, not sure how much libraries changed between name changes), but it was fairly out of date. There's also the Java Applet based version run by Xfire Plus! [xfireplus.com], but last I heard that was also broken.

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[HazE_nMe]

There is a plugin for Pidgin/GAIM called gaim-xfire
You need to get it from the snapshots page if you want Pidgin support.
http://gfire.sourceforge.net/snapshots/ [sourceforge.net]

Somehat Faulty Mechanism

[cromar]

There's an article in the current 2600 [2600.com] explaining just how easy it is to "trick" the XFire daemon into counting time for the wrong executable.

Not that anybody cares enough to skew the results and risk being caught, I'm sure, just saying it's a bit insecure a method.

Article fails

[shoptroll]

Sad.

The article fails to mention how easy it is to game the stats because about a year ago there was a deliberate multi-forum attempt to get Windows Solitaire to the top of the chart. It did manage to beat Counter-strike for #2 in the wee hours of one morning, but never did get anywhere near WoW.

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[ben there...]

You might think it makes it easy to game the system, but I, for one, am glad that it only records your gaming hours when Xfire is running. I mean, I'd never want to tell the whole world to know that I play video games for over 40 hours a week. Wait--no--forget I said anything.

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[Disseminated]

I've logged thousands of hours of minesweeper.

I should enter a tournament or something.

X-Fire is awful

[obeythefist]

X-Fire is a horrible, viral, wannabe spyware rootkit (I'm not saying it is but it sure seems like it wants to be). It comes bundled with some games and has an installer that basically lies and if you click "No, don't install this horrible ball of pus and malware", then asks you "Are you sure you don't want to play with your friends online?" - inferring that without that bloated pile of scum you can't play multiplayer games.

This whole article should never have been posted.

No, I'm not trolling, the readers n

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[pieaholicx]

Oh yes, I know I love to bash on programs that I choose to install because an installer makes me feel bad about not installing it. Also, it's not a rootkit, nor anywhere near it. "A rootkit is a general description of a set of programs which work to subvert control of an operating system from its legitimate operators. Usually, a rootkit will obscure its installation and attempt to prevent its removal through a subversion of standard system security. Techniques used to accomplish this can include concealing

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[tubapro12]

That doesn't sound familiar at all. So I proceeded to install the xfire to see if my memory had failed me, and it hasn't. Only thing it just installed was the Xfire messenger.

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[obeythefist]

And did you find, as X-Fire told you, that you can now play with your friends online, as previously you had not been able to?

Or did you in fact find that X-Fire's marketing team were a bunch of wankers who'll be first with thier backs to the wall when the revolution comes?