Xbox One News: Microsoft Exec Discusses Games, Console Before Release Date

With the Xbox One era set to begin on Nov. 22, Microsoft executive Phil Harrison sat down with Edge magazine to discuss the next-gen console and its upcoming games.

Harrison revealed that, while the Xbox One team is focused on launch and the holiday season right now, afterwards Microsoft will begin to shift focus towards the future and deliver several new features to the device:

"So there has been some change in our engineering priorities as you would expect, but we don't have any change to our fundamental vision which is that the world is going to be a digital place. We have incorporated some of the important benefits of disc-based games, mainly sharing and trading games, but that doesn't dull or change our digital vision. We just reordered our priorities a little bit. We have a very significant engineering team - some of the smartest people I've ever worked with - who are very focused on launch right now. But as soon as we get past launch then there are some really exciting things that are on the way."

These new features include options like the Family Sharing Plan that was previously announced for the Xbox One and backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games through cloud streaming like the PlayStation 4's Gaikai.

The executive also discussed both indie and blockbuster games for the Xbox One. Harrison stated that the company wants to attract indie developers by making development on the Xbox One as easy as possible:

"So the ID@Xbox program is self publishing - so that allows developers to be completely in control of their creativity and completely in control of their vision for the game - subject to what you would expect in terms of decency and extremes of content. We want developers to literally take their brains through their fingers straight onto the screen and out into the world. We want it to be frictionless."

Finally, Harrison was asked about Valve and the ambitious Steam Machines and SteamOS programs the company is working on. He had positive things to say about the company, but stated that Steam's focus on the living room helps justify the moves that Microsoft has made in the past:

"I know Valve and really respect what Valve does, they're a great pioneer in this industry so I'm really excited to see what they're doing. I don't know enough about what they're actually doing to comment but it does help prove that the centre of gravity for the best videogame experiences is the living room. The biggest TV in the house, very powerful CPU/GPU, that's our strategy, and the fact that another competitor's validating our strategy is fine. It's all good."