With the Xbox Series X release date on its way next week, Microsoft is beefing up security for Xbox Party Chat.
Over on the Xbox One subreddit, engineer Bill Ridmann replied to a concerned player warning others that they could suffer a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack through joining Xbox Party Chat (thanks, Pure Xbox). This basically means that players can have their internet connections bombarded to render them offline.
"We know this is a problem - we are actually phasing out P2P voice connections for party chat completely which we've been working on quite a bit in the background to stop this very problem," Ridmann replied on Reddit. "We've been ramping up a larger percentage of parties to be completely server based week over week (so you don't make direct connections to other party members so they can not see your IP) and soon should have no more P2P based parties."
Ridmann went on to add that he's seen some concern about players IP addresses being revealed through the Xbox Party Chat app on smartphones. The engineer dissuaded this belief, saying that when someone joins a party through their phone, that party becomes connected to a server, shutting off everyone's IP addresses from being readily available.
In short, voice party chat on all Xbox consoles is being made a lot more secure by being connected to dedicated servers. This will no doubt come as a relief to anyone who is planning on picking up either of Microsoft's next-gen consoles when they launch next week.
Speaking of, there's now exactly one week to go until both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S launch worldwide on November 10. For a full list of games launching alongside both consoles, check out our page on all the Xbox Series X launch games for more.
Alternatively, if you're still looking to put down a pre-order for Microsoft's more powerful next-gen console before it launches, head over to our Xbox Series X pre-orders guide for a list of retailers with stock available.
