Something terrible. Something cool. The saga of the Xbox One has swung from one extreme to the other over the last few months. So, after the unsettling news about what Microsoft may be trying to sell to advertisers, there’s a slightly better feature of the Xbox One that’s come to light. When you hit an Achievement, the on-board DVR will capture that moment for you to share.
Achievements have been one of the most popular features of the Xbox 360, creating a seismic shift in how people play and enjoy games. But if you wanted to preserve that moment, you had to set up external capture equipment to save it. In an interview with YouTuber ChampChong, Xbox Australia exec Adam Pollington said that players won’t have to do that anymore.
Automatic recording of achievements is a nice touch, something that lets you assemble a brag book of your in-game feats and that builds on the social stickiness of the whole Achievement phenomenon. Maybe not a console-selling feature but a smart one.
UPDATE: Microsoft sent the following clarification to explain how this functionality will work.
Xbox One keeps a rolling record of your most recent gameplay, and there are two main ways for this video to be captured by Game DVR. First, game developers mark “greatest clips” that happen within the game that represent fun and interesting moments within gameplay, such as when you unlock certain Achievements. Additionally, you can also issue commands, with either your voice or the controller, to capture interesting moments you would like to record or that just happened.
So, it seems like this isn't an across-the-board automatic feature so much as something that can be implemented by developers or initiated by players.