Xbox One Feature News: Exec Discusses Communicating With Gamers, Online Petitions

It has been a roller coaster ride for those who are hoping to get an Xbox One later this year.

First, Microsoft revealed the console with several policies that were quite unpopular with gamers. This caused Microsoft to repeal several of these policies. This, in turn, caused some Xbox One fans to start a petition to return the console to the original state they were promised earlier. Needless to say, this is not how Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten envisioned the reveal of the new Xbox would go.

In an interview with IGN, Whitten spoke about the need to communicate more with their customer base in order to get people excited for the system again:

"I think it's pretty simple. We've got to just talk more, get people understanding what our system is. 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."

When asked about the petition to return the used games/DRM policies that were announced initially for the Xbox One, Whitten said that reversing those policies was about adding choice to the Xbox One experience, and helping the console reach more people:

"When I read some of the things like that petition, from my perspective we took a lot of the feedback and, while Xbox One is built to be digital native, to have this amazing online experience, we realized people wanted some choice. They wanted what I like to call a bridge, sort of how they think about the world today using more digital stuff. What we did, we added to what the console can do by providing physical and offline modes in the console.

It isn't about moving away from what that digital vision is for the platform. It's about adding that choice. Frankly, I think we need to just do more to let people see how the console works, what they're going to be able to do for it. I think a lot of the things they're wishing for are frankly there."

It will be interesting to see if the Xbox One is able to outshine the PlayStation 4 when the console is released in November, or if the lack of communication between gamers and Microsoft cause the console to suffer.