• Newcomer's Guide to Xbox Live
• Choosing a Gamertag
• Top 10 Reasons to Get XboxLive

Voice Communication
One of the first decisions we made when creating Xbox Livewas to make voice an integral part of our technology. Every XboxLive-enabled game that supports multiplayer gaming also supports voice. Period. We wanted our service to be a revolutionary, fun, and social atmosphere. And it's hard to be social without talking to other people.

Taunt opponents, strategize with teammates, groan in despair, and exult with a war cry! It's all in real time, and unless you've experienced it before, you have no idea how unbelievably cool it is (those who've played games over a LAN and heard trash talk from the next cubicle know exactly what we mean).

And if other players get obnoxious—be it over-the-top trash talk or heavy breathing—you can mute them!

Voice Chat
Not only can you communicate with friends during gameplay, but you can also chat before and after games. Voice chat allows you to send and accept invitations to chat from the Dashboard. Simply set up a voice chat session from the Xbox Live Dashboard and send chat invites to your buddies. They work just like game invites. Chats can accommodate a maximum of 16 chatters (depending on your network performance, of course), though realistically 16 voices babbling at once might make it a bit tough to follow the gist of the conversation. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

And, these are not random, open-to-anyone chat sessions. You invite your friends, and they can accept your invite and even bring one of their friends with our “friend of a friend” feature. It's a great way to meet new gamers and not have to worry about creeps. Unless you've got creeps on your Friends List intentionally—and in that case you're on your own.