Microsoft testing safety warnings on Xbox One to deter too much gaming

Laurent Giret

For those of you who have enrolled into the Xbox One Preview program, it seems that Microsoft is experimenting with notifications to inform gamers of excessive gameplay (via MSPoweruser). The surprising pop-up which says “Excessive game playing may cause problems in your normal life” was spotted by Reddit user iBobaFett after an hour of gameplay. He later shared a video of it on YouTube:

According to the Reddit user, the pop up notification showed up on his console after he switched his location to South Korea last week before switching it back to the US. An Xbox engineer nicknamed mistur_niceguy answered in the Reddit thread that some locales are actually configured to automatically display these kind of warnings on the gaming console. However, the Reddit user explained that switching locations several times and restarting the console finally made the pop-ups disappear:

I had to switch my location a couple times to fix it. I switched back and forth between US and UK 3-4 times and restarted the console between each switch, and afterward I did a full console reboot, just in case. I haven’t had the notification again since, so I think it fixed itself.

If you’re a member of the Xbox One preview program, did you ever encounter this kind of pop-up notifications on your Xbox One? Let us know in the comments if you think it makes sense for Microsoft to encourage gamers to use their gaming console responsibly.