REDMOND, Washington – After Microsoft revealed the brand-new Xbox One console to the world yesterday, a common reaction wasn't one of amazement or eagerness, but confusion.
Since most of the presentation showcased fantasy football, Skype, and multimedia applications, anyone wanting to hear about games was left hungry for details.
Wired sat down with Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison – the former head of Sony's worldwide PlayStation development studios – after the reveal to get answers about a future that seems to promise (or threaten) always-on requirements, a more complex scenario for used games, and a mandatory Kinect sensor.
Wired: How "green" is this machine? It seems so powerful, but how energy efficient is it?
Phil Harrison: You are the first person to ask that question. The Xbox One has multiple power states, starting with "completely off," but the device has been designed to operate on a very, very low power state – just enough to understand your voice and activate when it hears the key words ‘Xbox on’ and to do some background downloading tasks. We've broken it down [consults with PR assistant] to five U.S. cents per day at the lowest setting.
Wired: I've heard that if your Xbox One does not connect with Xbox Live at least once a day, the machine becomes inoperable and you're not able to play any of the games that you've paid for. Is that true?
Harrison: I don't think that's what was said. Let me try and clarify what is happening.
So, there is a lot of anxiety about "what if my Internet connection goes down" and you don't have connectivity for a period of time. There are a host of features which will be usable without an Internet connection – watching movies, playing certain single player games… all of which will operate offline. We expect most of the more advanced experiences, like online multiplayer games, or games which have a lot of connected features… those games won’t operate if you don't have an Internet connection. We designed the system to take advantage of a connection to the cloud, and all that that means. But no, it's not required that you are connected all the time, every second of every day.
There is some technology about how often, or how frequently the device has to ‘ping’, but that has not been... we have not talked publicly about that yet, but it will be very user-friendly.
Wired: So are you saying that there is no function of the machine which checks in with Microsoft to see whether the player is still authorized to use the games that they've bought – there is no user validation check, or any sort of DRM function?
Harrison: We haven't announced the details of that today, but like I said, it will be very user-friendly.
Wired: What's going on with used games? What about borrowed games? There's a lot of speculation today. Can you clear some of that up? For example, we have multiple Xboxes in my house and trade games all the time. If we have multiple Xbox One consoles, can we still do that?
Harrison: Absolutely, just like you can today. You take the disc, install “the bits” on every machine you have in your house from the same disc, and anybody in your household can play that game. You have exactly the same restrictions that you have today, as in only one of you can play that game at a time because you only have one disc. But anybody in that house... well, the Xbox Live account… it goes for both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, and any user inside that house.
Wired: So as another example, if I took my disc and went to a friend’s house, would I be able to play that game on his machine?
Harrison: Yes, you can. You can take your game around to your friend’s house just as you would today – that's assuming you have a physical disc – and what we're doing with the new Live technology is that... with the disc, it's just a repository for "the bits". You can put that disc into his drive, you can play the game while you're there, and then you go home and take that disc with you. But actually, "the bits" are still on his drive. If your friend decides that he really likes to play that game, then he can go buy it instantly, and it doesn't need to download again. It's already there. Once he's paid for it, it's immediately there.
Wired: So the discs that will be sold will essentially be start-up discs, and then the game isn't really connected to the disc anymore once it's been installed?
Harrison: Once you put the disc into your machine, you never need it again. If you want to keep it, that's great. You can do that. But you can also download the game. You don't actually have to have a physical disc after that point, but you can then share that disc with your friends which is basically a great way of distributing the content to other people.
Also, let me turn this around the other way. A game can be completely on a disc, with no additional content downloaded. You install the game on your hard drive, and other than pinging for Achievements and other multiplayer connectivity, then that's it. That's the end of it. Each game is on a case-by-case basis. But, I think it is very likely, that because of the inherent connectivity designed into the platform, that developers would want to expand and extend an experience over time.
Wired: Will all games on Xbox One be available both as discs, and digital?
Harrison: Yes.
Read on for more on backward compatibility, your current Xbox Live accounts, and the Call of Duty dog.
Wired: Is it true that there is zero backwards compatibility with 360 games, whether they be disc-based, XBLA, or XBLIG? There will be no way to transfer any of those games over, even if it's only through the cloud?
Harrison: Yes, that is correct. You will be able to transfer over your music and television purchases, but no games. The games stay on 360.
Wired: I assume current Gamertags will stay active and transfer to the Xbox One, along with the associated Achievements and so forth?
Harrison: Yes.
Wired: Will there still be avatars, and is there anything new being added to this new Live system? Any new sorts of achievements on top of the old system, or any new perks of that nature?
Harrison: All of Live has been redesigned from the ground up for Xbox One. There is a whole set of achievements which are driven by the cloud. Today, when a developer finishes the game, the achievements get locked at that point. In the future, with Xbox One, achievements are now dynamically pushed from the cloud. Developers can add new achievements... they can do some very clever things with bridging achievements across multiple games, and that means it can go on forever.
Wired: Does the device function if the Kinect is not attached?
Harrison: Kinect and Xbox One are one and the same. They are two parts of the equation. Obviously the Kinect sensor is used for Skype, for communication, for voice recognition, gesture and motion sensing and the rest.
Wired: So as an example, if your dog comes in and somehow it knocks the Kinect down and breaks it, would you still be able to use the box if there was a particular game which did not use the functions embedded into the Kinect?
Harrison: In that situation, I have no idea. [consults with assistant] What kind of dog is it?
Wired: The dog from the Call of Duty video you showed today. That one.
Harrison: (laughs)
Wired: For players who don't have consistent access to online connectivity due to their particular location or poor quality of service, how much functionality will they be able to get out of the Xbox One?
Harrison: So, Xbox One is designed to have an internet connection. You will recall what I said earlier about it not requiring one all the time, but just like many devices that we have in our lives today... they are an extension of the Internet.
Wired: Will there be region-locking? For example, if a person wants to import a game that's only available outside the United States, will it be able to play on the Xbox One?
Harrison: Generally, our policy on that is to let the developer or publisher choose how they want to implement that. I would imagine the same thing will happen with Xbox One, but I actually do not know.
Wired: Is the hard drive inside the unit upgradable? Also, is it proprietary, and will there be any external storage options?
Harrison: External storage, yes. Hard drive upgradability, I do not know.
Wired: So will Microsoft put out a separate external hard drive product that consumers can buy, or will Xbox One be compatible with non-Microsoft drives off a shelf?
Harrison: I do not know.
Wired: So can you clarify a bit about the fifteen exclusive games that were mentioned during the briefing this morning? Are any third parties involved, and are those for the general launch window, or will those be available right at launch?
Harrison: Microsoft Studios are developing fifteen games exclusively for Xbox One, of which eight will be brand-new IP. Those will be available during the Xbox One’s first year.
Wired: How many SKUs will you have at launch? Will there only be one unit to buy, or will you have varying packages with different price points?
Harrison: We will announce details on pricing and availability and configuration later on, but the current plan is to offer one SKU.
Wired: With regard to the feature that allows player to record their gameplay, will you be able to upload that anywhere, or will it only be shared between Xbox One owners?
Harrison: Game DVR is the feature you're talking about. It's a fantastic feature. Think of it as a video celebration of Achievements, but also players and developers will be able to record certain moments during the game as well. You can share that with your friends. It's saved in your private cloud storage that we give you. It is exposed on the dash and you can publish it to your social feeds.
Wired: So if I have a Twitch channel, can I send it there? Can I upload it to Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else?
Harrison: As I said, you can upload it via your social feeds. We will share more details on this at E3, but it's a very powerful feature of the box.
Wired: So what's the status of Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Indie Games? Is the plan to keep those programs going, or what do you envision for smaller games and smaller game developers?
Harrison: There's two parts to the question there. First, how will we curate that content and allow the user to find those games. In the past, we created three separate and distinct spaces. For Xbox One, we've very purposely done away with that. We just have "Games." There will be very big games, there will be very small games, there will be games in the middle... we don't mind. We don't want to categorize the type of game, or infer quality by the size of the developer who made it. I think it's up to users to discover which games are great, and it's up to them to share and talk about those things with their friends.
Also, the recommendation engine we've built into Xbox One will allow for much easier discovery of great games. The Game DVR feature will allow you to share with your friends what you've been playing, and they will be able to see it and say "that looks really cool, I want to play that game", so that actually has a massive benefit to the developer community, and helps solve one of the biggest problems developers face, which is discovery. How do they get their game to an audience? So, we've made some very thoughtful, purposeful decisions in the architecture of Xbox One which I think will be great for the developer ecosystem. These things have been very well-thought-through. And certainly, I'm extremely passionate about this space.
As you've seen on 360, we are already publishing and developing games which have a variety of business models, and we will continue that on Xbox One. We are committed to making that as global as we can, encouraging developers wherever they are to bring their games and experiences to our platforms.
The final piece is the Snap Mode part of the operating system. It's a Windows 8 kernel, so that expands the ecosystem of developers who can write for Xbox One by an order of magnitude. It will be a huge ecosystem of developers, and that's great for the consumer and the player that there will be even more developers who are tooled and capable of creating experiences for our system.
