Microsoft: Getting Xbox One screenshots is technically more difficult than thought

The update that Microsoft will roll out for the Xbox One in December does not give the console screenshot support yet. That will come early 2015. According to CEO Phil Spencer, making screenshots turns out to be technically more complicated than he calculated in advance.

Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, said in an interview with IGN that the screenshot functionality will be available in 2015. Microsoft will take a step back in December in terms of updates given that ‘the new consoles’ will come online in that month. Several new features will be introduced in the new year, he says, and the screenshot functionality will be one of them.

It is already possible to stream sessions on the Xbox One. “We can already do video, how hard can it be to extract a frame from it?” Spencer is said to have joked to his development team. However, according to him, neither the developers nor the players would be satisfied with this. A solution to the problem was devised two weeks ago, according to Spencer, which is currently being worked on. Spencer emphasizes that it is a sought-after feature among Xbox One users.