The Five Biggest Problems With The Xbox One

The Xbox One comes packaged with the next-generation Kinect 2.0.

This time around, the Kinect will be more versatile and accurate than the original, measuring everything from your facial expressions to your heart rate. And Microsoft would like as many games as possible to take advantage of it, whether by utilizing its voice commands or its motion detection system.

But the next Kinect isn’t a “peripheral” gadget. Not by a long shot.

The device is a required component of the Xbox One system and you’ll need to have it on and connected at all times—always watching, and always listening, to its users. What this means for the games we play is an open question, but it certainly raises privacy concerns.

German Federal Data Protection Commissioner, Peter Schaar, has called the always-on Kinect “a twisted nightmare.” Having your emotional data—conveyed through heart rate data, facial recognition, and so forth—recorded and stored on Microsoft’s servers does seem problematic at the very least.

The story goes into greater depth at forbes here.