Microsoft's Marc Whitten Talks Xbox One's Big Policy Changes

@shibboleth: Vita also did day one update.. its pretty standard. Basically the hardware has to be manufactured with firmware way before the hardware is sold, between that time you still want to do bug fixes and feature updates, therefore a day 1 update.

Patrick asked all right questions but Whitten was evasive and vague as Microsoft have been since the start of this whole thing, nothing has really changed, they still wont commit to anything 100%. They have done the right thing in removing all of the stupid DRM and always online nonsense, but they could literally turn it all back on again the second they reach critical mass on the user side. I know its maybe a little paranoid but i just dont trust them now, ill be keeping an eye on the whole thing for a good year or so (whilst gaming on the PS4) and if....IF they dont screw it all up ill buy one at that point but yeah....something still seems off.

His type of answers makes this whole political race analogy just fit even better.

Frankly, my dear, I'm still buying a PS4.

People are seriously getting upset about patches? Have you guys been living in the dark for the past console gen or never used a PC in the last 20 years?

Flipflopping like this after that whole escapade comes across as disingenuous, but regardless, glad this happened. No longer 100% opposed to the idea of eventually getting an Xbox One.

I have a lot more faith in Sony though. They didn't need customers to shout directions and point where they needed to go as they were fumbling around for an eternity, pretending to hear us or trying to (badly) convince us they were going the right way. Sony knew in which direction they should be heading.

PS4 is a potential preorder, Xbox One is a potential purchase at some point.

Hope digital sharing gets worked out. I think everyone understands that there needs to be restrictions, but some ability to transfer licenses would really ease the transition. Microsoft was on the right track with that at least.

"...frankly, we hope we see game creators come up with amazon things..."

Oh you Klepek. Great interview!

I know it's been said already, but. SCOOOOOOOPS!

I am confused.

What features did we lose to internet whining??

Also congrats Patrick. I always knew you had the most talent on the site.

Patrick throws some good questions and Whitten tries to say as much as possible without giving as little solid info as possible. Smells like full panic mode is on at Microsoft.

Is it okay to point out the tons of other typos, then?

@InternetDetective: Yeah, but I assume that's just not to admit defeat on a corporate level.

What I found most interesting about this interview was the fact that when Patrick attempted to ask about policies regarding the family share and the reactions to such features that Whitten just continues to talk about "the positive feedback from the community". Even with these changes, I still cant believe Microsoft is remaining cryptic in their conversations regarding the Xbox One.

Well thanks to all the people who moaned about the what i saw as non issues, i cant have my family sharing and no disk in drive play that i was looking forward to ..... progress has to happen just not any time soon it seems, sooner steams way of buying games comes to consoles the better

How can someone say so much while saying so little?

What does Michelle Rodriguez think abou all of this? That's what I want to know

I think I would have titled this, "Microsoft's Marc Whitten talks a lot and says very little."

Nice interview! I appreciate the asking of tough questions, which the other video game outlets didn't bother to do. I think it is very safe to say that it wasn't a "we heard the feedback and reacted" like Whitten is trying to spend the story to. It was more the consumers were not going to buy this product so we had to make changes. I don't appreciate the this is our first time hearing consumers speak about the product line they are pushing hard (every leak about the Xbox 1 received negative feedback by potential consumers so don't give me that) and I don't like how all of sudden Mr. "Go Buy a 360 if you don't like my policies" is trying to be humble now (that dude needs to be fired like yesterday). I appreciate that you asked the obvious question Patrick of how come MS didn't see the negative response coming, but I truly love how Whitten never truly answered the question.

I just was put onto Giant Bomb the other day, and without a doubt you can count me as a fan from here on out. Great work and congrats on the awesome scoop Patrick. Cheers

A shame though that everything that made them "interesting" meant shafting large groups of people and treating consumers like dairy cows.

Giant Bomb: Last question, and I'll let you go. How do you think Sony feels today?

Whitten: FATALITY!!!

LOL Are you kidding me? Let's all just ignore the joke of a PS3 launch. Clearly Sony didn't listen to anything consumers said about their console.... At least Microsoft addressed these issues before the console launched and didn't wait an entire generation to 'make it up' to consumers.

Tricky Scoops, droppin the mic in SF and he out!

Nope not even close. One big difference between Steam and XBO is that Steam doesn't require you to check in online every 24 hours so you can leave your account offline for as long as you need to.

The other big difference is that Steam actually has good sales all the time. Mainly because (believe it or not) Steam has to compete with other digital retailers on the PC. XBLA being the only digital store on XBO pretty much means we will continue to see the same non-changing prices we've always seen on XBLA.

They could have used the Steam model with offline mode, or extended the check in time, but thanks to consumer confusion and whining we are losing features, and FRANKLY, choice.

If you're going to come on here and point out typos, then point them all out or none.

"and I can chose to buy either of them online or physical"

"You get a ton the advantage of that at launch"

Neither of which can be right, now go home.

@vibratingdonkey: Problem for Sony is, this is probably the last few years they can expect to be able to rake in the conservative, always-offline physical media dollar in any significant amount, even though this announcement does offer them quite a bit more breathing room since there's no more uncertainty about the success of Microsoft's alternative model.

Sony may look like they're in a good position, but things can change fast. We're seeing Google Fiber being rolled out, and other providers are already responding with a better product, resulting in faster, cheaper Internet in the USA. As connection speeds and data caps become non-issues, downloading affordable games will suddenly be hugely attractive to a lot of people, and not all of them are going to want to play on Steam. Sony's choice is to ignore this and play it as safe as they possibly can, which leaves them wide open for a competitor to swoop in and dominate that space before we're even halfway through next gen. This could have been Microsoft, but they lost nerve. Nintendo could be in a position to capitalize if they cut their cycle short and come out with a revamped strategy, which I highly doubt. Apple's been rumored to be interested in gaming for a while now, and this could be the opening they're looking for.

In any case, we have two giant companies that are happy to stay their course for the foreseeable. Small, incremental changes to their digital services and pricing are likely to be enough to keep them on top if nothing major happens, but a total paradigm shift a few years from now could be devastating for both of them. Sony, to me, seems more vulnerable, simply because they're now in full customer-pleasing mode after their experience with PS3, and that could leave them unable to commit to big plays.

Yeah, I gotta agree there. Anyone suddenly thinking that Sony is all pro-consumer and pro-developer because of their "business-as-usual" approach to the PS4 needs to check their rear-view mirrors. It took Sony almost an entire console generation to course-correct from their arrogant, shaky PS3 launch. Building PS+ into a service that provides actual value to their subscribers, cultivating an image as an "indie-friendly" platform, promoting a digital marketplace that is offering an experience closer to what PC users have been familiar with... These are all recent, calculated moves on their part to make up for a lot of the ill-will that they fostered with the PS3 in its early years.

I'm not defending Microsoft, their policies, or their flip-flopping, but at least they saw the writing on the wall and walked back some of their stances before the console actually launched.

Calm down, duder. Some people point out typos out of a genuine desire to help the writer, not just to be a dick. It's entirely possible that the "amazon" mistake was the only one he actually noticed.

Good lord.

Can't please everybody. I'd rather have no dumb ass 24hr check in than some overblown family plan. Seriously, there's no confirmation that it won't work for digital games yet. All you guys that want to move into the "future" DO NOT BUY ANY DISC BASED GAMES ON XBOX ONE!. The same way the policies have changed due to customer outrage now is the same way that MS will see how much better it will be to forgo discs in the future due to sales.

But when they continue to serve us games at ridiculous prices for months old games down the road for digital releases when you can find said games in a store for 20-30 dollars less, make sure to give them shit then too.

@shibboleth: Usually because they have to start building the hardware now and shipping it with some sort of OS but the actual OS probably wont be ready until much closer to launch.

This

I was always going to buy an xbox one, but now I feel a little better about it. I see Kinect as a value add, and I enjoyed the original Kinect (Happy Action Theater, Sports, and Dance Central are all winners). The only thing I don't like, that Microsoft could easily change, is their stance towards Indie/small developers. Let them self publish. I want to be able to play Fez II or whatever Johnathan Blow comes up with Day 1.

Frankly.

Great interview Patrick, I hope you have a good time the next few days before you move back to Chicago.

@professork: except there are cases where internet is fast, stable and dependable.. however, unlike the states, they cap you with a quota, in NZ specifically.. Broadband is fucking terrible, our largest internet plans are around 150GB/month if you actually want to be able to pay for it..

The previous policy would have allowed me to buy my collectors edition of Watch_Dogs with all the swag, get it delivered to my house by the time i wake up at around 10am (after working a night-shift) install the game and play it.. anywhere.

I love steam and its digital distribution but some games I still buy physical for PC just because the download sizes for games like crysis is getting out of hand.. and I dont want to spend a good 10th of my months quota on a single game when i still have to stream Game of thrones in HD 4 times

@grimmie92: I see what you mean. I was just referring to the multitude of comments since this issue started stating that discs are holding us back. I'm not opposed to them letting you install discs at all. But where media is going, that won't be an option anyway.

Glad to see that someone feels the same way. I thought the 24hr check in was a bit much in some cases but a cloud based games collection sounded fantastic to me. It kinda sounds like they will still be implementing some of these features and if you buy digitally hopefully it will still exist as planned. I think one good side effect of this is it could force companies to price online sales more aggressively.

Can they guarantee that any of my Kinect data will be not be mined by the NSA? Not to sound like a paranoid crazy person, but that stuff bothers me more than not using a disk.

@murdoc_: Agreed.

@murdoc_: I think they can guarantee it will be mined by the NSA because it is going over the internet.

Pure Klepek magic; takes a great interview and attempts to ruin it with a final dick, unanswerable question. Really curious why Klepek hates Sony so much. Must've stole his prom date or something.

Frankly, the cloud.

umm, are you serious or perhaps just being a little melodramatic? Anyone who would classify an always online requirement as "incredibly heinous" is either incredibly out of touch with reality or a huge fan of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures (in which case, I salute you). I don't know about you, but I reserve that term for things that are actually meaningful like genocide, terrorism, and Amanda Bynes.

Also, last time I checked, Microsoft didn't actually DO anything to us. They laid out their intentions for an all-digital platform that still allowed for physical discs but with obvious restrictions and many people went apeshit. So, they caved in to this lowest common denominator feedback and removed every single one of those restrictions over 4 months before this thing will even exist. How is that incredibly heinous? How were you wronged in any way? You can talk intentions all you want, the truth of the matter is that their actual actions are speaking louder.

Consider this: was it incredibly heinous for a company like Sony to restrict all storage on the Vita (a system that requires storage in order to even function) to an overpriced proprietary SD card when the market is full of other competitively priced options with higher capacity at a better value to the average consumer? Does such anti-consumer intentions not make Sony incredibly heinous as a company such that they are never to be reconciled with again evar? Of course not.

All I would suggest is to put things in perspective for what they really are. Everyone is in this game to make money off you, none of them actually "care" about you, not even Reggie (OK, maybe deep down Shiggy does). The fact that you can easily be labelled ("gamer") makes it easier for them to sell you something. But we're all getting something out of the equation as well, we get to play games and escape or be entertained. That's all there is to this relationship; We pay to play. If you choose to read anything more into the industry deeper than that, or think that one company has "got your back" any more than the other, well that's either incredibly heinous or just plain foolish.

*mic drop*

Policy changes, such a big deal.

This is a good thing, but somehow it makes me respect Microsoft even less... I think that's irrational.

hey guyz calm down

I agree, but it sucks for me. I was looking forward to, as a collector, getting the physical disc AND have the convenience of playing it without a disc.

Even if the cloud library still exists in digital form, owning the physical disc is no longer part of that.

I hope they sometime will give you the option to chose between offline mode and online mode. Where in online mode, you can use the disc to install and check in for a connection and whatnot.

So basically what I got out of that interview was that Microsoft confirmed what I was saying yesterday, and after about 2 or so years into the life cycle of the X-1, they reserve the right to re-implement all the DRM stuff at any time they feel they want to.

Listening to feedback is cobblers!!! Sony forced their hand and was the reaction Sony has got over MS which forced them to change.....Glad they changed but I still wouldn't run the risk of buying an X-1 just so MS can suddenly say at a later date "we no longer are selling new games on disc" and DRM is suddenly re-enabled.

I'm pretty sure publishers got upset about the stuff Microsoft was saying about "family" sharing and the potential for abuse there. People were planning to have friends across the country on their family list and just take turns buying games, instead of buying all the ones they normally would, and sharing them with far more convenience and advantages over used discs. Most the people looking forward to this feature were doing so because they knew how much money it would save them by sharing digitally with their buddies, that's not what Microsoft was aiming for.

This could cut their sales almost in half as people would just play their friends game with minimal effort instead of buy it themselves. This had the potential to hurt their sales as much or more than used discs and I think Microsoft realized this and it played a part in them changing their minds because they were just trading one way to hurt publishers for another, and pissing a bunch of people off at the same time. I think it was a pipe dream to expect the "family sharing" to ever go live in the form people wanted it to (adding friends anywhere in the country to your "family" list and sharing with them).

"This is the first chance we've had to listen to our consumers' feedback... um, frankly, since that MASSIVE GLOBALLY-WATCHED EVENT AT WHICH WE WERE SUPPOSED TO PRESENT OUR FINAL CONCEPT... frankly... which nobody liked. Then, y'know, frankly, Sony happened. Frickin' Sony. So we're doing to them what they did to us. And pretending we're fine with it and it's not a huge disaster. Also, so many of us have been nailed for this. So many of us. Can we please, please just get past this horrible awkward negative press? We, like, frankly, totally respect our consumers now. Totally. We wouldn't lie about stuff like this."

Let's not get ahead of ourselves expecting MS to be honest.