Even with next generation system expected to launch next year, Microsoft continues to update and add new features to the already robust Xbox Live service. In addition to backward compatibility and new games to download each month, Game Pass continues to offer new games including major AAA titles like Obsidian’s upcoming and well received RPG, The Outer Worlds. Microsoft has also recently changed the way player gamertags work, bringing it in line with other marketplaces like Battle.Net.

In a recent announcement, Xbox players can now change their gamertag to anything they want, as long as it’s not hateful or suggestive, even if the name is already taken by someone else. For names that are already claimed, Xbox Live will automatically add in a ‘#’ and a series of randomized numbers after it such as Player#1234. Existing gamertags are not impacted by this change, only newly created ones that attempt to use the same name.

The first name change is always free and can be done through Microsoft’s social website. Following the name change, the new gamertag is displayed immediately on the Xbox dashboard and mobile app. However, the process takes a bit longer for actual games themselves as the newly changed name won’t show up there until sometime in 2020. Changing the gamertag also relinquishes control of the old name, meaning other users could potentially grab it as their own.

This new change follows in the footsteps of a recent update that added support for more character sets from around the world like Basic Latin, Thai, Cyrillic, Hiragana, and more. Earlier this month Microsoft also rolled out an offensive message filtering system to the Xbox Insider community. It contains four tiers of filtration levels so players can hide as much or as little as they want when playing online through received messages, requests, and more. Filters range from friendly only language, medium which allows for a little more leeway, mature which only filters out words that are always intended to harm, and finally unfiltered which lets everything through.

Source: VentureBeat