14 DAY TRIAL // Albert Penello, the lead planner involved with the Xbox One, says that his team at Microsoft will not deliver a live demo of the user interface of the new home console because of the licensing issues that would be associated with it.
In a post on NeoGAF, the executive explains that, “Even though we have rights to populate the *store* with Musicians, Artists, Movies, Actors, etc. – when it comes to us (as in Microsoft) publishing those types of things for marketing materials, it requires an extensive amount of approvals from those same Studios, Actors, Agents, Musicians, etc.”
At the same time, the company would need to get the approval of publishers for all games that are featured in a live demo and would be restricted in terms of what it can show.
He says that Microsoft is choosing to share live demos with the press and other observers and then rely on them to tell the public how the user interface of the Xbox One looks and how its features enhance the console experience.
The information comes after some of those who have seen the device in action have stated that it has problems switching between apps and that crashes are pretty frequent.
Penello adds, “There is nothing going on behind the scenes nearly as interesting as everyone would like to believe. We are a month away from launch, and people are working hard to finalize the last of the bugs. There are still a lot things left to be done.”
His post also offers a rundown of some changes that have been recently made to the Xbox One user interface.
The new Microsoft device is set to arrive on November 22 in 13 core territories for the price of 499 dollars.
The rival PlayStation 4 from Sony is launching on November 15 in the US and two weeks later in the EU for 399 dollars or Euro.