Even though it was a casualty of the Xbox One’s DRM 180, Microsoft is still open to the idea of gamers being able to share and gift digital games. In a recent interview with GameSpot, Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer clarified that these features haven’t been abandoned and that they will be a focus for Xbox One.
“We believe in a digital future on our box,” Spencer told GameSpot,“ however the executive did acknowledge the importance of retail.
“On the digital space, and the things that we’ve talked about, what that opens up…like we understand what games you own and who you are and how you move around and who you might want to loan rights to your games or gift your games to,” Spencer said. “We totally believe in that future. And any other marketplace you play in, these kind of mechanisms are out there.”
The Xbox One originally shipped with a family sharing program that allowed people to share their digital games with up to ten different people on different consoles at a time, but after confusing marketing techniques from Microsoft’s competition, along with poor in-house promotion, the program was scrapped.
Microsoft has openly mentioned that it’s considering bringing the program back and it appears the company is still working towards this goal.
“We are now fully heads down on thinking about and building out the future of our digital marketplace to enable what people would expect, and hopefully some things that will delight them beyond their expectations,” Spencer told GameSpot.
”I know when I say this I always get beat up, but I think some of what we were trying to say last summer was right,” Spencer said. While sticking up for the Xbox One’s original plans, he did admit that its offerings were poorly executed.
Recently Microsoft has taken other measures to improve its digital marketplace, by adjusting the prices of some of its digital titles to encourage customers to purchase more content from the Xbox Game Store. Hopefully the company has learned from its mistakes and we’ll see the Xbox One’s digital game sharing program return sooner than later.
[via GameSpot]
