Xbox One Will Have Digital Game Trading… Eventually

Microsoft are still planning to have digital game trading on Xbox One, despite the feature being among those removed after the console’s disastrous unveiling earlier this year.

Does this count as backtracking on a backtrack? I hope so.

Xbox exec Albert Penello all-but confirmed everyone’s suspicions that Microsoft’s original vision for the Xbox One – the one that horrified gamers and the press alike – is still very much the company’s ultimate goal.

Speaking to GameSpot he said: “We were trying to implement the ability to trade [and] loan digital games with your friends, which is something that no-one else was doing.

“I believe, in retrospect that people have calmed down and gone back and actually looked at what we said, people are starting to understand, ‘Wow, they did want actually to allow me to loan and trade’, which other digital ecosystems don’t want to do.”

Translation: “Suck it nay-sayers”.

“I think we need to do that,” he continued. “That has to be part of the experience. Right now, we’re focused on launch and we switched the program back to discs, because that’s what customers wanted.”

Another feature that fell to wayside following E3 was that of Family Sharing. The ability for a small collection of users to access a single library from any Xbox One console was one of the few original features that wasn’t universally shat upon, and it’s return would be welcome.

Of course there is sense and logic in Microsoft’s original vision for the Xbox One, and hopefully they’ll have learnt how to better implement it when the time comes. Telling consumers what it’s about in a clear manner would also be advisable.