Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they are shutting down the Mixer streaming service and partnering with Facebook Gaming. It was a bombshell announcement, and one that will no doubt yield lasting ramifications. However, following the initial shock, Xbox One owners were left pondering what exactly that meant for their console's built-in integration with the soon-to-be-defunct service.
Across the Xbox subreddit, questions began to pour in as to what would fill the void left by Mixer's departure. After all, Xbox One's social hub is powered by Mixer, and provides the console's native streaming capabilities. Would they leave that area of the Xbox One's dashboard empty, or would something take its place?
Given the newly-established Facebook partnership, one could perhaps reason that Xbox might integrate Facebook Gaming into the console, allowing players to seamlessly stream to their audience on a new platform. However, there seems to be a consensus amongst the community that this would be less than ideal, with several commenters expressing concern over Facebook being able to access user data for their own nefarious purposes.
With no clear answers, it became easy to suspect the worse. Fortunately, Xbox's Major Nelson, aka Larry Hyrb, took to Reddit to shed some light on the situation, directly addressing two of the more prominent concerns.
In response to one user asking if Facebook would, at any point, be integrated into Xbox, Nelson states: "If you are asking if the current Mixer integration in the dashboard is just going to become Facebook gaming. The answer is no."
Addressing the question of whether or not Xbox would share user data with Facebook, Nelson responds: "We certainly are not doing that now, and no plans to do that."
So there you have it. According to the Major, there are no plans to replace Mixer's Xbox One integration once the service is shut off on July 22nd, and user data is safe from the Zucc - at least for now..
