4. Kinect may be watching you more closely than you know
A more philosophical dilemma has to do with Xbox One’s new Kinect sensor.
It’s an impressive piece of hardware designed to be far more sensitive than Microsoft’s existing add-on for Xbox 360. We’ve been told we can expect better low-light performance, a wider field of vision to reduce the amount of room needed to play, more reliable voice detection, and the ability to not just track and recognize more points on the human body, but also people’s faces. It can even take a good guess at your pulse.
Kinect is an integral part of Xbox One. You can’t even turn the system on without the sensor bar being plugged in. In fact, most people are likely to turn on their Xbox One by telling Kinect to power up the system.
All to the good, most folks would say, and I basically agree with them.
However, this new, more powerful, more integrated sensor has led some people to worry about privacy. They see Kinect as an all-seeing eye and ear that could be used for spying.
Microsoft execs have pooh-poohed this, explaining that operating system controls will allow people to switch off the device’s camera and microphone whenever they’re not in use.
But it’s up to game developers to decide when Kinect is in use while playing their games.
In an interview with Phil Spencer, Gamespot wondered whether games that don’t use Kinect for control could potentially still use the camera and mic to monitor player reactions to game stimuli, recording and analyzing physical responses in order to collect research data for future products.
The Microsoft Game Studios VP acknowledged this possibility, stating that this ”capability to the developer is really important as they try to get better at their craft and make better experience.”
HAL 9000 was also fond of games and had a knack for surreptitiously watching and interpreting human responses.
