Xbox One Product Officer Hints That Family Sharing May Come Back

In a recent interview with IGN Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten admitted that Microsoft’s messaging for the Xbox One wasn’t great and hinted that Family Sharing will come to the console eventually.

During the interview Whitten said that his team has to talk more about the Xbox One and really explain the benefits of the console. Microsoft previously had some issues communicating just what gamers should like about its upcoming next-generation console.

Whitten said “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.”

Read: Microsoft Shows Off 13 Exclusive Xbox One Games

Before the company reversed its DRM policies for the Xbox One, Microsoft wasn’t able to say why gamers would want the always-online features of the console.

The biggest benefit of the DRM was Family Sharing, the ability to share a library of games with family members no matter where they lived. Microsoft seemed to get rid of that feature during the policy reversal, but now it seems it may introduce the feature sometime later.

During the interview Whiten said “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?’”

So while Family Sharing won’t make the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft may introduce it sometime later. Microsoft has experience in adding new features to a video game console with the Xbox 360. The current Xbox 360 looks very different now and has many more features than it had at launch. What started as a great game console morphed into a media center than also played a ton of great games.

With the Xbox One Microsoft can start with a base of a great media center device and add more great game features over time.