I know most gamers will remember the controversy regarding Microsoft, the Xbox One and their fans in the days after the console’s debut at E3 last year, but for those of you who don’t remember, it came down to an argument: does Microsoft care to listen to their fans? Since announcing the Xbox One, Microsoft has made excellent strides to improve their relationship with the players that supported Xbox from the beginning and they are continuing this trend with the planned redesign of Xbox One’s UI.
The director of Xbox Live, Larry Hryb, talked with Canada.com to give his take on Xbox One’s direction. He stated in the interview that he wants the console to appeal to a range of fans. He doesn’t feel that the Xbox One is solely a gaming system or entertainment system.
“There’s no reason why you can’t have an extremely powerful game console that also does entertainment. Why does there have to be an ‘and or’? We need to be able to have something that’s both. When that console isn’t being used for playing a game, that means perhaps the gamer wants to watch some streaming media. Why not design a system that can handle that as well, and switch between the two?”
Hryb also talked about refining the console to fit gamer needs just like consumers saw with the 360 launch, claiming that the people who work on the project are gamers themselves and know what gamers want.
“The team that works on Xbox are gamers themselves. We want to build the system that we use and that we know gamers would enjoy using.
“We’re going to continue to refine the system and make it what the Xbox fans are expecting and what they want. We’re listening to the feedback every single day. I’ve already seen some changes in the operating system internally with what we’re building.”
Microsoft might finally be listening to their gaming audience and bringing some new things to the table. Hryb and the Xbox team certainly made gamers upset with taking the Xbox to an all-in-one entertainment system last year, but maybe this year is different. What do you think? Are these future changes too little too late? I wonder if there is still time to bring back some of the gamers Microsoft lost in the debacle.
