Xbox One “shame” and the return of digital sharing

The Xbox One’s back-and-forth PR debacle has generated some mixed feelings on the console, but while there may be some regrets, the company has high hopes for the next-gen machine.

When speaking about the press conferences before and during E3, Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten said that he did have regret.

“One of the things I think we learned was that we didn’t talk enough, and we were incomplete in a lot of [discussion about] how using the system would work,” he said.

“Because we weren’t participating in the conversation in a deep enough way, it got us sort of off cycle about how we talk about our program. I think we’ve learned a lot of lessons.

“And I think it’s something that you’re going to see a lot more from us, frankly, is engaging more with the community. I think it’s the number one thing I’d want to do if I went back, was have the conversation more open and more complete.”

Marc Whitten

Looking ahead

Looking forward, Whitten explained that the positive feedback regarding the Xbox One has excited the team about the future possibilities.

“The thing that’s really gratifying is that people are excited about the types of features that are possible, and it’s sort of shame on us that we haven’t done as good of a job as we can to make people feel like that’s where we’re headed,” said Whitten.

A large portion of the gaming community were outraged with Microsoft’s initial announcement of Xbox One’s 24-hour check-in and restrictions on second-hand game trading, but the company understood that gamers require choice.

“While Xbox One is built to be digital native, to have this amazing online experience, we realized people wanted some choice,” Whitten said. “We added to what the console can do by providing physical and offline modes in the console. It isn’t about moving away from what that digital vision is for the platform. It’s about adding that choice.”

The digital sharing feature was removed, but Whitten explains that it could return when the time is right.

“If [digital game sharing] is something that people are really excited about and want, we’re going to make sure that we find the right way to bring it back,” explained Whitten. “We took some feedback and realized there was some stuff we needed to add to the program.

“To add it to the program, we had to make room, just from a pure engineering perspective, to be able to get that work done. So taking Family Sharing out of the launch window was not about ‘we’re going to take our toys and go home’ or something like that.”