Aside from the obvious answer of "because they don't", why has there yet to be any indication that either XBL or PSN (mostly XBL at this point) are going to have a way to indicate people on my friends lists who are interested in playing specific multiplayer games? For example, let's say I am playing Oblivion, which can be saved anywhere. Now, I may also be interested in playing Uno online, but everyone on my freinds list are playing something else or staring at the dashboard for some reason. What would be nice would be for a way to go to my "Games" list (which contains every game that's ever touched my 360 including that demo Bejewelled from 2005) and flag games on that list (or better yet have a separate menu) as games that I'm interested in playing online. Then, anyone else on my freinds list who wants to play an online game of Uno would know that I'm interested, and that inviting me would probably be successful, rather than going through the whole voice/text msg method.

I think a system like this would do a lot to counter the massive dropoff in the online playerbase of certain games whenever a new "game of the month" comes out. Developers would be encouraged to produce more DLC, and would help to build long-term fanbases (I may even buy that SOTN theme deck for Uno). It would also be a nice complementary system to a clan setup. I'd still be interested in playing Chromehounds, Fight Night 3, or any number of XBLA games with people on my friends list (pubbies can go to hell), but the current setup simply doesn't make that a simple process.

I know Home will have the structure to pull off something like this, but from what the video implied, it'll be a somewhat unwieldy method and require you to be in "Home" mode rather than just jumping to the dashboard (although definately better than the current system). I just want to know why such a valuable community feature hasn't been implemented.

That actually sounds pretty cool if it could actually help the drop off as you say.

I often wish XBL had this feature.