Microsoft’s u-turn on proposed restrictions for pre-owned games and requirements for connecting online with the Xbox One may have pleased the masses, but it didn’t have the same effect on one particular Xbox engineer.
One particular Xbox employee took to Pastebin to anonymously vent his or her anger over Microsoft’s decision, which ended up in their work on DRM and point of sale services being scrapped. The angered employee decided to take the opportunity to discuss a couple of features that Microsoft had not yet chosen to share with us, including an intriguing sounding social network exclusive to Xbox One gamers.
“Another feature that we didn’t speak out about was the fact we were building a natural social network with Xbox One in itself that didn’t require gamers to open their laptops/tablets to post to their other friends nor did they need to wrestle with keyboard add-ons” the post reads. The engineer continued to spill;
“Each Xbox Live account would have a full “home space” in which they could post their highest scores, show off their best Game DVR moments, what they’ve watched via Xbox TV and leave messages for others to read and respond to. Kinect 2.0 and Xbox One work together and has robust voice to text capabilities. The entire notion of communicating with friends you met online would have been natural and seamless. No reliance on Facebook, or Twitter (though those are optional for those who want them).”
It’s unclear whether this social network is still getting the go ahead or not – the way our leaker phrases its introduction suggests that it is, but just wasn’t mentioned in the original reveal or at E3.
Another feature, dubbed Family Sharing, was also discussed in the lengthy Pastebin post. It seems clear that the engineer who wrote the post worked a lot on this feature, although the way in which it is discussed suggests it will be given the boot along with the DRM restrictions, or at least reworked later on.
The idea, in essence, allows gamers to buy games and put them in a shared library on an Xbox One. The gamer then decides who gets access to these games – those who are ‘family’ – by entering their gamertags. This means that games can be shared via the internet with anyone in the world, not just the family in your home who use the same console, however, full access is not granted. Instead your ‘family’ members get put into a demo mode where they get anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour’s access to your games. Whilst the restrictions will again displease some, the idea is a pretty good one that will allow new games to be played and discovered, demo-style, with ease.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Microsoft implements either of these features after one angry engineer has spilled the beans on them early. We’re also wondering whether his or her desk will be clear come Monday morning…