Microsoft could bring some Xbox One digital sharing features back

Earlier this week, an online petition on Change.org asking Microsoft to bring back the original Xbox One DRM policies generated a bunch of sign ups (over 22,000 as of this writing) as well as a lot of media attention. Now, a Microsoft executive claims, the company could return some of those original digital sharing features to the console.

You may remember there was a massive backlash to a lot of the originally announced DRM policies for the Xbox One, particularly the limits for sharing or trading physical Xbox One disc games and the requirement for signing onto the Internet at least once every 24 hours to play games on the console. Microsoft decided to eliminate those restrictions a few weeks after they were revealed.? However, Microsoft also choose to remove previously announced plans to let up to 10 family members share in playing a user's Xbox One games, as well as killing a way to have all of an Xbox One owner's games linked to their Xbox Live account.

In an interview with IGN, Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten says that the petition this week proves that Microsoft still needs to do a better job in communicating to gamers Microsoft's vision for the Xbox One. He stated:

The thing that?s really gratifying is that people are excited about the types of features that are possible, and it?s sort of shame on us that we haven?t done as good of a job as we can to make people feel like that?s where we?re headed.

In terms of the family sharing game feature, Whitten said, "If it?s something that people are really excited about and want, we?re going to make sure that we find the right way to bring it back." He added that the reason the family sharing feature was removed was "just from a pure engineering perspective" in order to put back the features that gamers said they wanted in the Xbox One.

Finally, Whitten says that Microsoft has learned a lot in the past couple of months since the Xbox One was first announced and that they will be trying to interact more with the game community from now on, saying, "I think it?s the number one thing I?d want to do if I went back, was have the conversation more open and more complete.?

Source: IGN | Image via Microsoft

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