Microsoft Says Their Customer Communication With Xbox One Was Poor

Marc Whitten, a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft’s Xbox Live, has been speaking to IGN about customer communication and the relative failure of Microsoft’s constantly changing Xbox One policies. This comes in the wake of some Xbox One fans petition Microsoft to reinstate the axed policies which we removed after considerable outrage to them. Marc Whitten also hinted that previously axed features such as Family Sharing will be making a come back.

“We took some feedback and realized there was some stuff we needed to add to the program. To add it to the program, we had to make room, just from a pure engineering perspective, to be able to get that work done. So taking Family Sharing out of the launch window was not about ‘we’re going to take our toys and go home’ or something like that. It was just sort of the logistics of ‘how do we get this very, very clear request that people really want, that choice, and how do we make sure we can do an excellent job of that, get to launch, and then be able to build a bunch of great features?’ In the future I think you’re going to see the ways that we change how you discover, how you consume, share, play. To me, this is the magic of digital.

So it is clear that Microsoft are trying to appeal to both those who favoured and those who opposed the original Xbox One policies. Clearly there are compromises to be made before we finally see the Xbox One released later this year. If there is anything to take from the extensive interview with Marc Whitten on IGN it is that no policies are concrete and everything will change relative to customer feedback.

Image courtesy of Microsoft