Microsoft had launched its next generation gaming console, Xbox One, last month. The console that integrates gaming with home entertainment features is said to be Microsoft's creation for the living room and is built for a 'family' experience.
After concerns emerging from the gaming community with regards to various unanswered questions about the Xbox One, Microsoft has finally answered a few of them through a series of posts.
The company has described Internet connection requirements, game sharing and a slew of privacy concerns related to Kinect. We sum up the major clarifications for you.
1. All your games are on the cloud:
No matter what form your game is in, once installed, one copy will always be stored on the cloud. That means you can access all your games from any console after logging in from your account.
2. Reselling games will be a pain:
Until now, Xbox games had found a huge second hand market. But now with every game being on the cloud with its own limitations, Microsoft has designed the Xbox One so that game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers. Microsoft has made it clear that it does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games.
But it can be expected that the game publishers might charge you a fee for the transfer of a game. This is something that shall vary from publisher to publisher.
3. Share your games library with family and friends:
On the Xbox One, up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library. You can always play your games, and any one of your family members can play from your shared library at a given time. Seeing the other restrictions, this feature surely seems to be a positive move.
4. Each disc-based game can be shared once:
Until now, passing games to friends has been a casual activity. Xbox One surely changes that trend. You can share your game with a friend for free provided you fulfill two conditions. Firstly, you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and secondly, each game can only be given once. No chain of game sharing happening now.
5. Your console is almost dead without the Internet:
When the Xbox One was launched last month, the wave of entertainment features had made gamers question whether that would also mean the need for a continuous Internet connection. Microsoft had then confirmed that it did not, and offline gaming would indeed be possible. Well, the recent set of information adds a condition to that statement. "With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies." So simply put, you cannot play games for more than 24 hours without an Internet connection.
Another statement on the post stated, that for an optimal experience, a broadband connection of 1.5Mbps is recommended.
With such demanding Internet requirements, users with wonky Internet connections surely will face problems with the console.
6. Xbox Kinect might not be that creepy:
With the Kinect always active on the Xbox One, privacy concerns had surfaced. As a response to these, Microsoft has made it clear that with voice and gesture commands, controlling Kinect is not that difficult a task. A simple voice command, "Xbox off" will switch off Kinect while you enjoy your entertainment features of the console and the only command that the sensor will recognize that time is "Xbox on". If you wish to, you can even switch off this feature. Although for apps and games that require Kinect functionality to operate, you will need to turn it back on.
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