PS4 vs XBO?

by Schooly D, TSD Gaming Condo, TX, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, 00:15 (4208 days ago) @ uberfoop

If you're MS, why bother with the internet requirement and the kinect requirement, but then allow people to make those things useless by blinding the camera? Or are they just counting on the fact that most people won't bother to do it?

That was Schooly's point from the "at least one recognizable face..." post: they could require that at least one person be in view to try to get people to not play camera tricks, and then apply DRM if too many people are in view.

Yeah. I'm basing most of my soothsaying on the requirement that the Kinect sensor be connected for the console to operate at all. tarehart (in IRC) believes this requirement is just an attempt to "push" the technology on the user base. I think that's reasonable, but my Schooly Senses tell me to not ignore the usefulness of such a requirement in a grander scheme involving monitoring who is playing/watching what, and using that information to target advertisements and in some cases restrict content (both of which can be found in Microsoft's patent filings).

On the one hand, it would take a lot of the air out of Microsoft's dealings with movie publishers if they say "We can make sure no more than X people are watching your movie at a given time, and if they exceed X we can make them pay extra, unless they turn the sensor at a wall or cover it with a Post-It note."

On the other hand, you're right that it'd almost be suicidal. I'm sure a lot of people leave a movie on while they're cooking in a kitchen adjacent to their living room, for example, and the rumored functionality would prohibit that.

Bottom line for me: If the Kinect's functionality is going to center just around targeted advertisements, I can see the Person-In-FOV requirement to be false. It's not the end of the world if ads are just a little less targeted. But if the Kinect's functionality extends to restricting content like the movie audience example, I give it more credence.