Following reports that Microsoft plan to drop their stated ambition of making every retail Xbox One a viable dev kit, the company has branded such claims "inaccurate."
On Reddit, Xbox director of programming Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb wrote:
"The comments made today about our retail to dev kit plans were inaccurate. We remain committed to ensuring the best possible solutions for developers and hobbyists to create games for Xbox One We will share more details at a later date."
Speculation that began intended to reverse course sprouted from a Develop confernece yesterday which was attended by DigitalSpy. Xbox Advanced Technology Group's Martin Fuller said during an audience Q&A there are "no plans" to implement the feature, adding "that was a very admirable goal, it hasn't happened unfortunately. Can't tell you the specifics of exactly why not. As far as I'm aware there are no plans. I'm not aware of the reason why we didn't manage to do that."
It's worth nothing that Hryb's statement does not in fact confirm that Microsoft still intends to make retail Xbox One dev kits and it's quite possible the feature has still been dropped.
Separately, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has reaffirmed the company's commitment to Xbox in a letter to employees.
"We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox. Xbox is one of the most-revered consumer brands, with a growing online community and service, and a raving fan base. We also benefit from many technologies flowing from our gaming efforts into our productivity efforts – core graphics and NUI in Windows, speech recognition in Skype, camera technology in Kinect for Windows, Azure cloud enhancements for GPU simulation and many more.
"Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft."
Last month, Microsoft released a Kinect-free Xbox One for $399 – the same price as the PS4.
