When the Xbox One was first announced there were a few features that would of defiantly made me shy away from the console and maybe got for the cheaper option of a PS4, fortunately Microsoft made a U-turn on its 'Always on' and DRM policies. There were however a lot of good features that were lost along the way such as pre-loading games and friends and family sharing and you could be forgiven for thinking that these features were gone and forgotten but during a recent podcast Phil Spencer, head of all things Xbox stated that these features are on the to do list. "We looked at the digital features that we had talked about last year and as a gamer, there were a lot of those features that I think really resonated and were smart features for people who really have a lot of games and maybe play on a couple consoles or have bunch of people in the house or want to share with friends," Spencer said. "As I look at our monthly update roadmap, those kind of features are in our roadmap. There is a little bit of a challenge now that you've got DRM on a disc." Sony have already implemented game pre-loading on the PS4 in the latest update (1.72). Its possible we may see pre-loading on the Xbox One in an upcoming update however digital 'Friends and Family' sharing should not be expected of anytime soon according to Spencer due to its complexity. "There's some complexity now that you've got these discs that have DRM that you've got to figure out. But it's definitely part of our roadmap with the overall product." It's great to see these features that were first announced last year haven't been dropped by the wayside as these were certainly a selling point for Microsoft's Next Gen console, its just a shame the features were not available at release.
