Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Xbox One messaging falters once more with confusion over dev kit policy

Back-to-back 180s, a lot of noise, but no policy change.

The announcement and release of the Xbox One was marked by consistent poor communication from Microsoft, with rumor and speculation running rampant and no clear statements from the console company. The bad blood this situation generated culminated in the reversal of the original Xbox One plan—instead of being an always-online console that would let you play games you owned on anyone's console and share with your family members, it would be a conventional console with none of these Steam-like features.

One policy that was popular, however, was the promise that every Xbox One would be usable as a dev kit, enabling indie developers to use regular retail Xbox Ones to develop, debug, and test their own games. This was an important part of Microsoft's efforts to democratize indie development on Xbox One after criticisms of the process it used for the Xbox 360.

But earlier today, even that scheme looked like it was being abandoned. Digital Spy reported that Xbox Advanced Technology Group's Martin Fuller said in a Q&A Session that it wasn't going to happen after all, for reasons that Fuller was uncertain of. "We were in the early stages of Xbox One looking at the idea of a retail kit that could be turned into a development kit, and vice versa," Fuller said. "In the end, although that was a very admirable goal, it hasn't happened unfortunately. Can't tell you the specifics of exactly why not. As far as I'm aware there are no plans," he added. "I'm not aware of the reason why we didn't manage to do that."

Was this to be another 180, following the abandonment of the original DRM plans and the decision to debundle the Kinect?

No. It appears instead that, once more, Microsoft isn't fully in control of its own messaging. The company issued an official statement saying, "The comments today were inaccurate. We remain committed to ensuring the best possible solutions for developers and hobbyists to create games for Xbox One. We will share more details at a later date." So it seems that the ability to use retail Xbox Ones as dev units is going to materialize at some point after all.

Of the two familiar Xbox One stories—bad communication and about turns—this time it's the former, not the latter. Why Microsoft continues to have a hard time keeping its plans straight remains a question for the ages.


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