On PlayStation 4, grabbing an in-game image is as easy as clicking “Share,” but Xbox One gamers will have to wait until 2015 to do the same.
Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, told IGN that the promised screenshot feature for Xbox One won’t arrive until next year. “As we come back into the new year, we’ll see new stuff, and screenshots is on the list,” he said. With gaming becoming more linked to social media by the day, it’s an ongoing disappointment that Xbox One owners can’t easily share images of their gaming exploits. Sony’s #PS4Share hashtag on Twitter shows how popular the screenshot feature is proving among gamers.
Spencer explained the reason for the delay, saying it’s more challenging to implement than it might sound. “We can do video. How hard can it be to just grab a frame of the video?” he asked. “But they don’t want to just clip from a video, and neither do players. It’s a little more technically challenging than I thought. Two weeks ago, they think they’ve found a good solution for screenshots. They’re working on it. They know people want it. The team has a path to getting it done, and now it’s just prioritizing.”
Xbox One continues to lag behind its big rival, PlayStation 4, in terms of hardware sales. Industry analyst Michael Pachter had predicted that September would see Microsoft outperform PlayStation 4 in North America for the first time this year, but it didn’t happen.