Xbox One News: Games Get Dedicated Servers, Console Will Not Support Real Names at Release Date

The Xbox One is set to appear on Nov. 22, and users are eager to get their hands on the console and see what sort of features it will have. New reports have surfaced that claim that each Xbox One game will have dedicated servers for online play, since the ability to use a person's real name online has been reportedly dropped.

Senior Xbox director Albert Penello was recently asked on Twitter if Microsoft will have dedicated servers for each and every Xbox One game, and his response was a simple and concise "Yes."

Some games, such as Titanfall and Call of Duty: Ghosts, were already confirmed to have dedicated servers for the games. However, this is the first time Microsoft has stated its intent to have dedicated servers to every Xbox One game, which is made possible through the Xbox Live Compute service. The service will allow creators of games to use cloud-based scalable computer resources on Microsoft's own regional data centers. This means that the technical limitations for gaming on the Xbox One is vastly increased and allows for more users to play online together at once and make the whole online experience much smoother. 

However, it appears that one of the promised online features for the Xbox One, the ability to use the player's real name, will not be available at launch. The news was confirmed by a Microsoft representative who spoke to Kotaku. According to the representative, Microsoft is focusing on some aspects of their Xbox One online experience at the expense of others, such as the ability to use real names:

"While real identities continue to be part of our plans for the experience on Xbox One, at launch, customers will continue to search for friends using their Gamertags...Our teams are working hard to deliver a quality experience for Xbox One. This means prioritizing some features and sometimes postponing others for a later update."

While some users may be disappointed that they will have to see a friend's username pop up onscreen instead of their real name during Xbox One sessions, considering the variety of more important features that Microsoft must prepare during the launch of the Xbox One, this feature is clearly not a priority. Perhaps in the future Microsoft will allow users to switch to their real names, but for now they will have to settle for usernames like most everyone else who plays games online.