Xbox’s big boss Phil Spence revealed that Microsoft would like rid online gaming of some bad actors by creating a multi-network program whereby bans that apply to Xbox might also carry over to networks from other companies.
Spencer spoke to The New York Times, acknowledging that this would be a “hard one” to achieve, but it’s till something he wishes to see one day.
“Something I would love us to be able to do–this is a hard one as an industry–is when somebody gets banned in one of our networks, is there a way for us to ban them across other networks?” he said.
Spencer also said he would be willing to have a single system that allows players to bring their “banned user list” with them to other platforms. “And I’d love to be able to bring them to other networks where I play. So this is the group of people that I choose not to play with. Because I don’t want to have to recreate that in every platform that I play video games on,” he said.
During the interview, Spencer spoke how Microsoft uses AI on Xbox to monitor the sentiment of a conversation” to detect “when a conversation is getting to a destructive point.” The Report A User button is also available in the Xbox UI.
This doesn’t seem so far fetched, as it was not that long ago that play between Xbox and PlayStation users would be unlikely. Yet here we are. Although, as Spencer pointed out, it would be far more difficult to get a system-level cross-platform ban system going between companies.
