A user who has signed on to an online gaming service can send an
invitation to a friend appearing in the user's friends list to join in
playing the game the user has loaded or may join the friend in playing
the game being played by the friend, regardless of whether the game title
played by the friend is the same as that loaded on the user's game
console. If the game titles are different, the party needing to load the
game title to be played is prompted to do so, and then prompted to reboot
the game console. Information written about the new game to be played is
automatically written on the hard drive of that party's game console and
automatically accessed after the reboot for use in expediting the log-in
process of the player who had to reboot.