The Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten is back answering questions on IGN again like last week. But what news will Marc Whitten bring this week?
Posted from IGN
Can you organize your now-expanded Friends List into categories? i.e. “College buddies,” “Friends from work,” etc.
MARC WHITTEN : You’ll see us add more in this area in the future. At launch, you’ll have your expanded list of friends and the ability to mark favourites so that it is fast and easy to play with the friends you care about most.
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Is there cross-console Party Chat? i.e. since it’s all “Xbox Live,” can people on Xbox 360s Party Chat with their friends on Xbox One?
WHITTEN: For a variety of technical reasons – including the sound quality that I talk about below – we don’t support voice chat between the two systems. You will still be able to send and receive text messages to friends on both systems, however.
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OK, so we can’t chat across systems. But can I at least see what my friends are doing on either console?
WHITTEN: Yes – you see your friends on both systems, including their rich presence. My friends that are still on Xbox 360, for example, might see that I’m on Xbox One, playing Ryse. Since I can have more than 100 friends on Xbox One, if I go back to Xbox 360 and I have more than 100 friends, it will only show me the subset of my friends who are friends with me on Xbox 360.
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Since Kinect must be plugged in for the Xbox One to function, what happens if your Kinect breaks? Like if it falls off the top of your TV onto a hardwood floor or something? Will the console cease to function?
WHITTEN: Xbox One is designed to work with Kinect plugged in. It makes gaming better in many ways – from the ability to say “Xbox On” and get right to your personalized home screen, to the ability to control your TV through voice, Smartglass and more. Kinect allows you to search for your content, instantly move between games and your personalized dash and more with just your voice. Kinect helps you pick up and play by automatically knowing which controller you have in your hands. No more need to interrupt your friends game or navigate through multiple UI screens to sign in and tell the system which controller you are holding. It will even bind the controller to the console if its currently unbound – no searching for special buttons! Of course – these are just a few of the system wide benefits of having Kinect. Games use Kinect in a variety of amazing ways from adding voice to control your squad mates to adding lean and other simple controls beyond the controller to full immersive gameplay. That said, like online, the console will still function if Kinect isn’t plugged in, although you won’t be able to use any feature or experience that explicitly uses the sensor.
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How “off” can Kinect be when the system is in use?
WHITTEN: You have the ability to completely turn the sensor off in your settings. When in this mode, the sensor is not collecting any information. Any functionality that relies on voice, video, gesture or more won’t work. We still support using it for IR blasting in this mode. You can turn the sensor back on at any time through settings, and if you enter into a required Kinect experience (like Kinect Sports Rivals for instance), you’ll get a message asking if you want to turn the sensor back on in order to continue.
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So Microsoft has again done a U Turn on what it has said from the beginning when there said that the Xbox One wouldn’t work with out the Kinect plugged in.
What can Microsoft do now to fix all the problems that it has made for itself in the Next Generation console wars?
