During last year’s Gamescom event, Microsoft announced that it would be adding TV DVR to the Xbox One. This feature would allow users to record free-to-air TV programs remotely, and stream or download them to Windows 10 PCs and mobile devices. This was meant to be an alternative to Windows Media Center for Windows 10, which the company killed off.
It looks like the Xbox One will now have no TV DVR functionality at all as Microsoft is abandoning the feature. In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft said: “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to put development of DVR for Over-the-Air TV on hold to focus our attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming experiences across Xbox One and Windows 10.”
One of the biggest criticisms Microsoft received when it announced the Xbox One was that the system seemed to focus more on media playback and Kinect features than on actual gaming. We’ve already seen the company all but abandon the Kinect, so this move to drop TV DVR can be seen as another step toward making the Xbox One console a core gaming system.
It should be noted that while TV DVR won’t be coming to the Xbox One, the system does still have TV playback functionality. I know that whenever I log into my Xbox One (mostly to watch Netflix, ironically enough) I see a good deal of my friends using the Xbox TV app. This tells you that people do in fact use video game consoles for things other than gaming. However, the vast majority of folks buy consoles to play games. Abandoning non-gaming features in order to focus on what the system is supposed to be about is a wise move on Microsoft’s part.
Source: xbox one – Google News