Report Says Xbox One Plan to Allow All Units to Work as Development Kits Scrapped, Microsoft Denies It [UPDATE]

[UPDATE] Microsoft has released a statement on the matter, saying that it has not in fact scrapped the plan to allow all Xbox One retail units to be used as development kits.

“The comments today were inaccurate. We remain committed to ensuring the best possible solutions for developers and hobbyists to create games for Xbox One. We will share more details at a later date.”

Today at the Develop conference in Europe, Microsoft announced that it has scrapped its previously announced plan to allow any Xbox One retail unit to be used as a development kit. The program is dead before its first birthday, as Microsoft originally announced it in late July 2013.

At the time, Xbox corporate vice president Marc Whitten (who has since left the company), said, “Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development.”

But not anymore.

Xbox Advanced Technology Group’s Martin Fuller told a group of media today, including Digital Spy, that Microsoft has “no plans” for the feature. “We were in the early stages of Xbox One looking at the idea of a retail kit that could be turned into a development kit, and vice versa,” he said.

“In the end, although that was a very admirable goal, it hasn’t happened unfortunately,” Fuller added. “Can’t tell you the specifics of exactly why not.”

Asked to give more details about why the move was necessary, Fuller said, “As far as I’m aware there are no plans. I’m not aware of the reason why we didn’t manage to do that.” We have reached out to Microsoft’s official Xbox PR team and will update this story if we hear anything back.

This is not the first time Microsoft has reversed an Xbox One policy. Last summer, the company changed a series of Xbox One policies in response to consumer feedback. In addition, the company announced just two months ago that Kinect would no longer be sold with all Xbox One units.

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