Microsoft Exec Says Xbox One Kinect Is Not Built For Advertising

MojoKid writes "Among the various SNAFUs and PR misfires related to the Xbox One release earlier this year, one item that had people upset was that Kinect would be used for advertising--or worse, that the Xbox One Kinect was actually designed with advertising in mind. The source was a UI designer who was expounding the capabilities of the Kinect and how it could be used to deliver interactive ads and used for native advertising. However, Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello threw cold water on much of it. 'First--nobody is working on that,' he said. 'We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards.' He also stated that if Microsoft were to engage in something along those lines, users would definitely have control over it, meaning that Kinect would not be spying on you; you would have to engage with Kinect for anything to happen."

Re:We can trust them

[girlintraining]

They would never lie to us.

Yeah... about that... while I can't find the text of that leaked XBox memo because Microsoft has been busy suing and scrubbing it off google search results, it's pretty clear that their definition of not lying is basically telling half-truths, white lies, and spin control. Like, for example, "Xbox One Kinect Is Not Built For Advertising" ... well in the strict MicrosoftieSpeak(tm) sense, that's correct; it was built for entertainment. The fact that it's loaded down with a fuckton of advertising is just, you know, an extra 'feature'.

Precipitous Collapse of Microsoft

[lubaciousd]

The first time I saw a screen-shot of Windows 8, I couldn't help but feel like the tile-oriented format was designed to shoehorn advertisements into the user interface. For a long time Microsoft relied on large-scale OEM business contracts to make money, and now that more price-efficient alternatives are available for office software and operating systems, they're approaching the opposite extreme of monthly subscriptions and integrated advertisement. They built these elements into XBox Live first, correctly assuming that gamers would be willing to put up with it so long as decent titles appeared on MS consoles. Remember when they first announced the original XBox? All of the concerns and criticisms that I had then(too proprietary, not enough 3rd party support, deference to the loyal customer base) have emerged again, but they lack the air-tight PC-gaming community dominance that they possessed circa 2001. For a long time, they had an array of products that was good enough to keep users from leaving; recently, they've made a series of products (Zune, XBox 1, Surface 1/2, Windows 8, Windows Smartphones) that are far enough from what consumers, and more importantly, loyal customers want, that they are approaching a catastrophic lack of interest. As much I would love to relish the downfall of the M$ of yore, I wish they would behave more like a competitor to Apple and start putting out products that just work again; they really had home-runs when it came to Windows XP and Windows 7, and I don't understand why they abandoned what was working so well for them.