Do you think MS are making an assumption on users having other W8 devices in the household?

[martinmc78]

Just having an interesting chat with a friend who's platform agnostic and asking stuff about the xbox one.

He posed the question about USB external drives or connecting to a NAS to which I answered its not enabled yet but it doesn't matter much as I can share to my xbox one via surface or pc.

His response was that as an entertainment system that should be a core functionality out of the box, I agreed but said its not much of an issue for me due to sharing through devices. He then pointed out that its a pretty massive assumption on the part of MS that people wanting that sort of functionality would already have Windows 8 devices to take advantage of it.

Its got me thinking. Im not sure if he is correct and that's what MS are assuming or whether its just a case that they expect early adopters to be happy with just what's available at launch.

As with everything MS deliver its never complete at launch, updates will always come to improve functions. But should the console that's supposed to be the "one" for your entire entertainment package be missing things like this at launch.

What are your thoughts??

 

[Coreldan]

I think it's a safer assumption that people have Win 7 or 8 (remember that Win 7 works for play to as well) than that people have external USB drives.

It doesn't change the fact though that the functionality should've been in, but obviously due to the rushed holiday release it just couldn't make it. I'm not worried, it's coming, but like I said, I'm pretty sure there are much more Xbox One owners that have a Win 7/8 PC in the house than there are Xbox One owners that have USB HDDs.

As for whether I think it's justified for them to make this assumption, I think yes, although I might answer different if it was actually limited to Windows 8, but Win 7 especially has enough market penetration to assume this.

 

[Dos101]

Full DLNA support is coming, it's just a matter of time. I'm assuming it was easier to implement the Play To function sine the Xbox One's OS shares much of the same code with Windows 8/8.1, and the team only had a limited amount of time to get the OS functional. They have released the SmartGlass app for most other platforms, making it easier on people who do not have a Windows 8 or WP8 device (they are far ahead of Sony in this department). The reason the OS for the Xbox One (and PS4) seem so incomplete is because both were rushed, and they had to prioritize features and functionality.

 

[Keith Wallace]

I think it's something where they expected the digital revolution they wanted to push would be the solution, but they now have to patch the old functionality in, bit-by-bit, since they reversed it. It was SUPPOSED to be that 10 people could download your game, so re-downloading upon arrival at a friend's house wouldn't be necessary, so that woudl cover the game stuff. After having to reverse the sharing features, I imagine that they had to push back the timelines of things like SkyDrive inclusion and external storage options. Given the market penetration of Windows, I wouldn't think it's the biggest issue in the world, though. If you're a Mac family, I don't care about you anyway, haha.