Microsoft certainly is a bunch of bastards. Honestly though, with the original Xbox and the 360 I started to like them again, after growing up with them being jerks. They had earned a lot of goodwill with me and their gaming policies, but now that has all gone down the drain and I am pretty fed up with them. I will probably still buy an Xbox One eventually, but the Kinect features make me ill. I don't need or want Kinect.
Why I still hate XBOX One! The 50 Shades of Grey edition!
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 On 07/06/2013 at 02:58 PM by asrealasitgets See More From This User » |
Why I still hate XBOX One! The 50 Shades of Grey edition!
I never really chimed in with my thoughts regarding the console war between S & M. While the reference to sadomasochism is used in jest here, I think that after weeks of reading emotional reactions to press releases, rumors and misquotes from corporate employees on blogs, forum boards and angry screaming videos regarding rumored digital rights policies and invasive camera technologies, I started to get the impression that gamers were all in some weird form of subservient bondage relationship with these giant corporations tying us down with their non-negotiable always-on policies.
Of course, at first the consumers seemed to be on the receiving end of pain and humiliation, when their digital rights seemed to start slowly dissolving, and while some very complacent journalists applauded the shift in this new direction as a sign of inevitable things to come, angry gamers took to public forums in revolt and denounced these new abusive policies. Then S heard the complaints, and loosened up their policies a bit, got rid of the creepy cam and even offered $100 credit, but they still, however, very quietly whispered that you would need to be tied down to their network services in case you wanted to be rewarded in the future. The reaction after all the complaining was a collective cheer? M heard the reaction from the crowd and followed by loosening their own grip, realizing that they had been too heavy handed, however unlike S, M is still going to watch us.
Fear and outrage mostly seems to stem from unsubstantiated news and rumors fed from unnamed sources that later turned out to be true, but even though information revolves around speculation and hyperbole, if it still raises good questions, then it’s worth pursuing regardless of fact or fiction. Take this article “Microsoft Integrates Xbox One Advertising with Kinect To Profile Users and Deliver Ads,” from hothardware.com posted on July 5. Now, whether this article is accurate or not, it still raised interesting questions, internally, regarding what we don’t know about the new XBOX One hardware still. Microsoft has been rumored to have patented technology, as well as Sony, regarding interactive advertising by profiling their users with their invasive camera and microphone. In some cases, the Xbox dashboard interface would be populated with banners ads displaying products that fit your profile constructed from data mined from watching your behavior. This is already in place on 360 and most web browsers. In another case, you might be prompted with an interactive ad that would only go away until after you respond to the ad through physical or verbal response. This sounds awful. In the worst case, if you decide to rent a film to watch, you have to pay per person in the room and the camera can scan the area to count how many people are present. This sounds stupid and ridiculous; however given M’s history with forcing things upon us that we don’t like, I would probably lean towards the idea that this can be true. However, these are all rumors of course.
This particular article is basically saying that Microsoft, well no actually, Microsoft is saying that implementing advertising into the design of their new hardware was deliberate and considers it to be a good thing because consumers will experience ads in a new way. I wonder how many consumers are aware of this or are they even going to care? Once they have their XBOX Ones setup for a year and then Microsoft will slowly roll out a software update that starts watching you, quietly while you are playing Battlefield and then suddenly a pop-up ad shows up asking you to join the Marines and to do 100 push-ups while screaming you love America to make the pop-up go away! Just speculation of course.
Source: http://hothardware.com/News/Microsoft-Integrates-Xbox-One-Advertising-with-Kinect-To-Profile-Users-and-Deliver-Ads/
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