Regarding the Kinect 'spying' capability.
Everyone who has commented on this has missed the point by a wide mile.
It's not about looking at a video feed of you. No one gives a damn about that - porn is everywhere in the web. It's about the data. Android phones, Chrome, Firefox, a TON of software you install today on your Windows machine prompts you by default to enable 'anonymous usage statistics' to send back to the company.THIS is what will be a problem with the new Xbox.
I'm sure if you look at the ToS of the current Kinect games, it'll say that some data may be sent back to the company. If you're not really following me here and you don't know what kind of 'data' might be useful since they won't be spying at your naked butt, here we go:
- Kinect recognises limbs and joints (pivots) by default in 'gaming mode'. It's actually in the news article.
- MS can gather a ton of info about this.
- The dimensions of users will be able to measure global and country-specific human sizing averages. This is useful to car manufacturers, furniture, clothing, etc.
- Measuring the range of movement of human targets. Gather this data and compare it over a 5 year period.
- Kinect is capable of detecting objects as well as humans. E.g. skateboards can be scanned into a game and used as a controller. Expand this, and MS can actually determine what is in your living from.
- From the above, they can use additional photo evidence to find out roughly how much $$ is in your living room. Extrapolate to find the household 'wealthyness' value.
- Using the wealthyness factor, MS store will display cheaper or more expensive games.
Shall I go on?