| bananaking21 said: an xbox one dev on reddit is having an AMA (ask me anything) thread and there are tons of interesting info being released, [...] - The majority of the masses care only about the console, except that the success of the Kinect carries much more weight to us. The sensor costs almost as much as the console to make. [...] - Question : What was your reaction to the DRM reversal, and now this petition? Answer: Personally I was a little surprised at the timeframe which we decided on the DRM reversal. I thought we didn't push on its benefits enough. The petition shows there are lots of people who want these benefits as much as I do and clearly our execs care or Marc Whitten wouldn't have referred to it in his IGN interview.
- Questions : 1.) Compared to the last one, how is the reliability of the console? I love my Xbox 360 but this is my third one, the first two claimed by the RROD. 2.) Would it be possible to bring back family sharing even if only for digitally downloaded games? Answers : 1) Can't comment on this as it's not my area of expertise. But if you compare the failure rates of the launch 360 with the current 360 S. It should give you an idea. 2) I believe Marc Whitten answers this in the IGN interview he gave. I sure hope we bring it back. [...] - Question : You obviously came here to share information. What was that information? Answer : My purpose here is not to reveal technical information but to show you that us devs are consumers too. Some of the policies we too only heard the day of the reveal or at E3. We too, ponder about their pros and cons. I can tell you we have heated discussions on our policies all the time internally. Engineering practices have taught us there are always trade offs. We lay out all the benefits of different policies and figure out what we have to give up in order to obtain those benefits.
The positive comments we read make us happy. The negatives give us the impression that we are evil and the Xbox One might as well be the Troll box. I have confidence in our management that all their decisions are always well debated before they come to a plan of action.
[...]
- The goal with having a Kinect ship with every Xbox is to guarantee to game developers if they implement Kinect features into their games, everyone who has an Xbox will be able to experience it. I often see people dismiss the Kinect instantly because they haven't seen it work like I have. It is an integral part of the Xbox One experience. - Question : Couldn't you include it in the box and not require it to be hooked up? It seems like the 2 issues are not mutually exclusive, and people uncomfortable/uninterested with the Kinect could just throw it in a closet while it's still in every box at the same time.
Answer : The number of features on the Xbox One that uses the Kinect is almost too many to count. I can't imagine using the console without it. To me, I see two ways to deal with this.
1) Not require the Kinect to be always plugged in and have all these features turned off by default.
2) Enable these features by default and turn them off if people choose to turn off the Kinect.
The first choice would undermine our guarantee to game developers.
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About kinect cost :-O
About DRM and family sharing, as I wrote in another thread, this solution would be good and honest: offering the initially planned benefits to those that accept the daily check, but without forcing it, particularly for offline gaming. It would be a fair deal in which both parts give and receive and in which the weakest part doesn't suffer any damage.
About failure rate: excellent.
About engineering trade-offs: it's the proper policy to follow, each company will give different weights to every goal and this will take to different compromises.
About Kinect included with every XBOne, this is their choice according to their goals, nothing to argue about it being good or bad, it's just the way they want to define the SW/HW experience of their platform.
About Kinect always on: I can see the shitstorm coming as soon as somebody will hack it and start spreading users' private unaware amateur porn on the net. And I can't wait for that 100% genuine amateur porn to come!!! 
...Although I'm not sure I really want to see good ol' Kow naked!!! 
But who knows, maybe his wife is a hot Brit MILF! O-)
