The Product

It's not surprise that Xfire has spread across the Internet faster than the Paris Hilton video. Besides being free, the software is extremely easy to install. After a brief registration process, the application can be downloaded from the company Web site fairly quickly, requiring 2 MB of hard drive space for PCs running Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP. "It's got a very small memory footprint, and it's easy to install" Fong says. The most difficult part of the process may be finding a suitable user name, as it may take several tries to find a name that hasn't already been taken (I was surprised at first that someone had already grabbed "Rorschach," but then I remembered there were already 3.4 million users ahead of me).

After registering and downloading the software, a small user interface emerges on the desktop that presents a host of features including voice and text chatting. Friend Tracker, for example, shows users if their Xfire friends are online and if so, what games they are currently playing. Even better is the One-Click John feature that allows users to quickly jump into more than 100 different games with friends with the click of a button rather than copying server IP addresses. Fong, a former world champion of Doom, Quake and Quake 2, says the idea for Xfire was born years ago when he was a team leader. "It was really hard to get in touch with people and find out where they were," he says. "This just makes everything easier."

In addition, around 200 games support Xfire In-Game, which allows users to send and receive messages while playing game without having to minimize the game (Xfire supports more than 500 games but not all offer One-Click Join or are In-Game enabled). The Xfire In-Game window itself is small but if users find even the smallest available size to be annoying, they can adjust the transparency of the window and make it nearly invisible. Oh, and if you don't want to be bothered, there are plenty of privacy settings.

The Xfire browser window is just the beginning of the rabbit hole, so to speak. For example, click on a username under "Friends Online" and a new box slides open to the right with the player's information - starting with the game he or she is currently playing and including the server's name, IP address and other technical data. Click on the player's profile and you're sent to the player's customizable page hosted on the Xfire web site. There, users are treated to a wealth of information about this player - personal data such as age, location, gender, and gaming style, plus an extended profile that offers up the player's occupation, hobbies and interests and even marital status; statistics such as hours logged per game in the last seven days (for instance, you can see said user has played 12 hours of World of Warcraft, six hours of Counter-Strike, and three hours of Call of Duty 2); "friend statistics," which also features games played and hours logged; favorite servers; and screenshots.

Screenshots? "If you playing Counter-Strike and get a good head-shot on someone, you can snap a picture of it and download the photo to your profile," Fong says. "It's kind of like trash-talking through a photo sharing system." The screenshot feature may be the least used asset of Xfire's formidable lineup - even the World of Warcraft players seem to have few to none screenshots - but that's akin to saying the Beatles needed a better drummer. The point is that Xfire users are given an area to make their own, hence the comparison to MySpace. And if that wasn't enough, Xfire offers more. Xfire features a P2P file network where users can download mods, patches, game trailers, and demos. Version 1.52 of the software, which was released last week, provides users with enhanced direct file transfers and improved voice call features, as well as several new Xfire-supported games.