The Xbox One will be a much more open platform, thanks to a few policy reversals that Microsoft felt it had to implement in order to stay competitive. The vocal minority that berated the Xbox One after E3 soon became the majority, so the highly digital future that Microsoft was hoping to create was held back before it could even get started. However, Microsoft’s Phil Harrison is confident that the original plan for the next-gen box will return – possibly not too long after launch.
“So there has been some change in our engineering priorities as you would expect, but we don’t have any change to our fundamental vision which is that the world is going to be a digital place,” Harrison said in an interview with Edge. “We have incorporated some of the important benefits of disc-based games, mainly sharing and trading games, but that doesn’t dull or change our digital vision.
“We just reordered our priorities a little bit. We have a very significant engineering team – some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with – who are very focused on launch right now. But as soon as we get past launch then there are some really exciting things that are on the way.”
When asked more directly about the return of DRM and 24-hour check-ins, Harrison remarked that “it’s all there,” insinuating that nothing has truly been removed from the console. Microsoft has seemingly realized the importance of used games and offline gaming at least for launch, but it might not be too long before the Xbox One vision creeps its way back into the picture.
