Sony and Microsoft (and if you support them, Nintendo) have very strict requirements about game servers and about how matchmaking works.ld be different issues entirely.
[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"]I know you can configure game settings and save them to your Xbox. But there's no persistence, right? Once the party's over, the "server" is down. You have to send out a bunch of invites to start a new game with the same people, right? It's not like a PC server where clan members are popping in and out all the time. I might be wrong, I don't play console games that often, but every time I do it's always match-making.[/font]
If you are getting a disc game published there are some pretty strict requirements. They are covered under NDA, but a few articles and postmortems discuss a few of their requirements, such as http://www.gamasutra...php?story=20384 and http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/09/. Google can find more.
If you go the XNA route, which you can do for an XBox Live Arcade game on your own, the requirements are a bit more relaxed:
http://blogs.msdn.co...quirements.aspx