Frustrated that someone else got the Xbox Gamertag you wanted before you did? Thanks to changes implemented by Microsoft this week, players can now choose a Gamertag that’s already in use, as long as they don’t mind having a hashtag and random numbers next to their display name.
There can be only one MasterChief, MajorNelson or F4hey, but now there can be a MasterChief#2538, MajorNelson#1099 or F4hey#4269. Detailed in a post over at Xbox Wire, the new Gamertag feature automatically assigns a numeric value to the end of a tag if a player chooses a handle already in use. The numbers, preceded by a hashtag, will appear on user lists and in games in a smaller font, keeping the focus on the tag itself.
Note that original Gamertags will appear with no numbers next to them, identifying the player as the original owner of the tag. If an Xbox Live member changes their Gamertag, they still run the risk of relinquishing it forever.
There are also more options to create a unique Gamertag, with support for characters from ten new alphabets.
- Basic Latin
- Latin-1 Supplement
- Hangul
- Katakana
- Hiragana
- CJK Symbols for languages in China, Japan, and Korea
- Bengali
- Devanagari
- Cyrillic
- Thai
I’ll probably stick with F4hey with no suffix. It’s dumb, but it’s me.