• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

AdvertisingAge: Xbox One's Data Treasure Trove Could Reshape Marketing

2345425

Member
For one I don't know if this information ever leaves the consoles. But to the people that choose to use the service, the tradeoff is more than likely worth it. Still, I'd wait to hear more of what exactly the service entails before jumping to conclusions. Wii Fit seemed to work well enough without uploading anything.
Nintendo isn't an advertising firm.
 

Into

Member
Are we reading the same thread? The reactions here sure make it seem that way.

MS just so happens to have a very successful console on its hands that allowed them to create a new way of advertising, since we have yet to see how this all plays out, lets slow down on the speculation of its straight up bad. The truth is, none of us know what's coming. It's the future of advertising. And the direction that its heading in. We have had to know this was coming, someone was gonna come along and use ads this way. I just don't see why it has so many people disgusted. Would it be better if they didn't charge you? Will forgive it as long as we aren't paying?

I see it as an natural evolution of ads, same way Youtube did it, same way FB did it. Companies want to male money, and as much as possible, this could possible generate a health amount of money for MS. Best believe, and sure its getting old, but Sony does has some sort of plans for this too, and I say good. Get that ad revenue.
But lets not act like we aren't getting invaded each and everyday by ads from all mediums.


We all have different opinions here on GAF, tastes, preferences etc. If you want to buy a Xbox One, by all means do so, its none of my business. I am not here to challenge that. But what strikes me about that above post is how devoid it is of a consumers perspective, it praises a company's actions because the company gets to benefit. Not a single sentence, letter or anything is devoted to the customer. And after all benefits for MS are listed, the poster throws in the "Sony Too!" and the whole "well everyone does it so its fine, deal with it"

Either you own shares in MS or you are so emotionally attached to this company that it gives you joy to see them do well financially.

I have no problem with "I wanna play Forza and Halo, and fuck all this shit, Xbox day 1!", but if your reasoning to accept all of this bullshit from this mega corporation is that they make profit = therefore it is okay, then that is not a good argument.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
Yeah. Problem of MS is that their suits are such pricks that are completely out of thouch with what gamers want. I mean, they've got him, Harrison and Spencer and that woman with a remark about watercoolers. And they had Orth and Mattrick.

Enough said...

EDIT: they were better with Peter Moore and Allard
EDIT 2: I forgot Major Nelson, I don't like that guy at all

Hey! It's Agent Harrison to you.
 

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
I love the fact that lots of people want to focus purely on the advertising itself because then they can use the 'others already do it' card. The concern is being monitored in your homes. Think about that for goodness sake. What the hell is happening to society?
 
Games, I want that shiny new Forza.

So a single (or even several) game(s) negates all of the anti-consumer ideas they intended to implement (and there's no guarantee they won't bring them back), all the false technical information they've been spewing, and making money out of observing your life style?

If that's your case... well everyone is entitled to their decisions, but it still seems rather bizarre to me... i'll leave it at that.
 

Anonumos

Banned
Are we reading the same thread? The reactions here sure make it seem that way.

MS just so happens to have a very successful console on its hands that allowed them to create a new way of advertising, since we have yet to see how this all plays out, lets slow down on the speculation of its straight up bad. The truth is, none of us know what's coming. It's the future of advertising. And the direction that its heading in. We have had to know this was coming, someone was gonna come along and use ads this way. I just don't see why it has so many people disgusted. Would it be better if they didn't charge you? Will forgive it as long as we aren't paying?

I see it as an natural evolution of ads, same way Youtube did it, same way FB did it. Companies want to male money, and as much as possible, this could possible generate a health amount of money for MS. Best believe, and sure its getting old, but Sony does has some sort of plans for this too, and I say good. Get that ad revenue.
But lets not act like we aren't getting invaded each and everyday by ads from all mediums.

Yeah, that's cool. What about me though? What do I get out of it?

EDIT: Oh wait banned.

...informative stuff...

Oh they WILL do it in some form. That much I'm sure. If any company had that kind of data, they'd be stupid not to. My only concern is how much it will affect me and if I can do anything about it.
 
For one I don't know if this information ever leaves the consoles. But to the people that choose to use the service, the tradeoff is more than likely worth it. Still, I'd wait to hear more of what exactly the service entails before jumping to conclusions. Wii Fit seemed to work well enough without uploading anything.

I know you think it's worth it and all but do you at least understand why some people are concerned or simply don't feel comfortable about it?
 

Becky

Banned
I love the fact that lots of people want to focus purely on the advertising itself because then they can use the 'others already do it' card. The concern is being monitored in your homes. Think about that for goodness sake. What the hell is happening to society?

No way this is going to happen. It would be company suicide. If you are talking about MS sitting back and watching you through the camera.
 

Barzul

Member
I know you think it's worth it and all but do you at least understand why some people are concerned or simply don't feel comfortable about it?
Oh I totally get it, but I do think MS has already made the most important change regarding Kinect, which is it being able to unplugged.
 
Man this bit right here could devolve into a horror movie, maybe in the same vein as Halloween III.

“How many people are in the living room? Are they taking any action based on the advertising they just saw? Can we watch the customers’ reaction, and if we can, do we have the capability of showing a different ad, or the same ad, depending on what the reaction was?” – Lynn Watts, Xbox Manager (source = CNET)
 
Can't they get sued or class-actioned over going against something in their TOS?

what you are doing is blindly defending the platform against all common sense and logic.

You are trying to paint a different narrative which directly contradicts quotes attributed to microsoft's executives.
 

jem0208

Member
So a single (or even several) game(s) negates all of the anti-consumer ideas they intended to implement (and there's no guarantee they won't bring them back), all the false technical information they've been spewing, and making money out of observing your life style?

If that's your case... well everyone is entitled to their decisions, but it still seems rather bizarre to me... i'll leave it at that.

Multiple games, wasn't really bothered by the lack of used games and internet requirement (I actually quite liked the whole "every game is a digital game" thing), I also couldn't care less about this advertising stuff. I just want to play games and watch Netflix, all this side stuff doesn't affect me in the slightest.
 

Salex_

Member
I love the fact that lots of people want to focus purely on the advertising itself because then they can use the 'others already do it' card. The concern is being monitored in your homes. Think about that for goodness sake. What the hell is happening to society?

They don't realize that they're slowly giving all every single inch of their privacy. Some people forget that it's not uncommon to keep their consoles in their room. Can you imagine if you still needed to have it plugged in? The rage would be even harder. The only option left for those who have any interest in Xbone exclusives but not the camera is to buy Kinect and toss it in the corner.
 

rjcc

Member
So a single (or even several) game(s) negates all of the anti-consumer ideas they intended to implement (and there's no guarantee they won't bring them back), all the false technical information they've been spewing, and making money out of observing your life style?

If that's your case... well everyone is entitled to their decisions, but it still seems rather bizarre to me... i'll leave it at that.

LOL

False technical information!!!

Anti-consumer ideas!!!

Show me the product you buy that those can't be said about, I'm deeply interested in this list.


(I'm not deeply interested, but I do need a laugh)
 
OK you got me there lol. Never ever heard of MS being in advertising, but I guess it makes sense with Bing.


Yeah it's not really apparent but Google is primarily an advertising company and most of their products are used to further that. Be it android or Chrome or their search engine.

Microsoft wants in on that. Badly. Bing ads is pretty much the future of their company because the desktop pc is going the way of the dodo (for regular folks, not pc gaming) and they haven't been able to gain any traction in phones/tablets and the xbox is still in the hole financially since incubation.

Everything they do going forward is going to be about leveraging their advertising.


I mean think about the kinect. I know some people are hopeful and I really don't like pissing on anyone's parade but the kinect has been out for THREE YEARS and they haven't made a compelling experience for it outside of dancing/fitness. I know the kinect 2 is a higher fidelity but has there been a kinect game where people thought "this would be awesome if the kinect didn't lag so much." The lag isn't the problem, the device just is not a good game controller.

So they move to tv. Some cool stuff for those into tv. Turns out every cable company and smart tv is beating them to the punch. I just saw an ad for a Samsung tv where you talk to it and control the menu with your arm and holding it... just like the kinect.

So no gaming experiences worth a shit shown and redundant tv features. Why on earth are they hanging this $100+ albatross around its neck? Advertising revenue. I see no other viable use for the thing.


Maybe I'm just a pessimist.



Edit: and I trust my cable provider or any smart tv maker, including Sony, as much as I do MS. They all are doing this shit for the same reason.
 

ryano9929

Banned
At any time Sony can spy on you if they want also. Every device that is connected to the internet is collecting data on you. If you have a problem with that then don't buy it. Apple and Google are collecting info on you right now with something you carry around everywhere in your pocket.
 
Multiple games, wasn't really bothered by the lack of used games and internet requirement (I actually quite liked the whole "every game is a digital game" thing), I also couldn't care less about this advertising stuff. I just want to play games and watch Netflix, all this side stuff doesn't affect me in the slightest.

I see, i respect that because it's your decision.

LOL

False technical information!!!

Anti-consumer ideas!!!

Show me the product you buy that those can't be said about, I'm deeply interested in this list.


(I'm not deeply interested, but I do need a laugh)

PS4.
 

Alx

Member
To that I call bullshit. This is where my own article get a little murky - because I talk about the NSA stuff now. People thought I was getting tinfoil-hat-ish (the article was popular on N4G when it went up so I was reading comments there... always fun). My point wasn't so much that the Kinect was going to be a NSA device. My point was that microsoft can't say stuff like "Microsoft has a strong track record of implementing some of the best privacy protection measures in the industry." Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks taught us that this isn't even close to true, Microsoft. You get no trust on this subject. And while I like albert penello quite a bit... I don't trust him on this subject either. They lost their trust with the NSA thing.

I don't entirely agree with that reasoning. Of course the NSA leaks don't help trusting MS or any other US company in the way they handle confidential data, but there are two very different things to consider on that topic : data collection and data access.
As far as I know, MS has a clean record on data collection (unlike Google or Apple for example). They do have a lot of information on their servers, but all of it has been approved by the user. They even admitted that user login through face recognition won't be supported on other consoles than yours, because your biometric data will never leave your console.

Other points I wanted to mention in this fast moving topic :
- NSA and marketing are very different, so people should stop mixing both. Marketing is only interested in you as a statistic. They don't want to know who you are, but what kind of people you are. That's why they're fine with aggregated data (like "27% of people betwwen 25 and 45 have watched this ad" and not "Mr John Smith in Seattle watched that ad yesterday at 7PM"). NSA of course is only interested in people to detect specific individuals.
- using kinect or cameras to detect user emotions is mostly a pipe dream. You can detect easy ones like a laugh (your phone camera already does), but everything else would be too subtle or user dependant to be reliable. If you read scientific publications about emotion detection through computer vision, you will notice that they all use pictures with exaggerated emotions, while someone watching a show would have the same emotion chart as Steven Seagal.
- another thing about emotions : marketing doesn't really care about them. If you provide them with that information, they'll just ignore it because it has no quantitative value. All performance indicators are based on numbers and tranformation rates. They want to know how many peope watched an ad, how many clicked on it, or how many bought the product. Not "did that ad make them sad ?".

I don't claim an entertainment system can't be abused to breach privacy, with or without a camera. But I think many people are just overreacting or drawing false conclusions (which doesn't surprise me any more here, but it's still disappointing). And most of all, there's no reason to be specifically suspicious of MS, especially since they've been quite clear from the beginning with what they're doing with your data and what they're not.

I mean think about the kinect. I know some people are hopeful and I really don't like pissing on anyone's parade but the kinect has been out for THREE YEARS and they haven't made a compelling experience for it outside of dancing/fitness.

That's because you're watching at your feet instead of watching around you. Kinect is not a gaming device, it is a user interface device (that can be used for gaming). Every other day I can see a new demo of a cool prototype from a new startup and there is a kinect appearing in the corner. There are publications and projects from Microsoft Research on dozens of different topics, all using kinect (simulating 3D TV, real-time 3D modeling, holographic interfaces, ...). All the robotics labs working in computer vision switched to kinect for their reseach projects because it makes their life so much easier...
You can't dismiss all of that because "they couldn't make a game I like with that device".
 

2345425

Member
Yeah it's not really apparent but Google is primarily an advertising company and most of their products are used to further that. Be it android or Chrome or their search engine.

Microsoft wants in on that. Badly. Bing ads is pretty much the future of their company because the desktop pc is going the way of the dodo (for regular folks, not pc gaming) and they haven't been able to gain any traction in phones/tablets and the xbox is still in the hole financially since incubation.

Everything they do going forward is going to be about leveraging their advertising.


I mean think about the kinect. I know some people are hopeful and I really don't like pissing on anyone's parade but the kinect has been out for THREE YEARS and they haven't made a compelling experience for it outside of dancing/fitness. I know the kinect 2 is a higher fidelity but has there been a kinect game where people thought "this would be awesome if the kinect didn't lag so much." The lag isn't the problem, the device just is not a good game controller.

So they move to tv. Some cool stuff for those into tv. Turns out every cable company and smart tv is beating them to the punch. I just saw an ad for a Samsung tv where you talk to it and control the menu with your arm and holding it... just like the kinect.

So no gaming experiences worth a shit shown and redundant tv features. Why on earth are they hanging this $100+ albatross around its neck? Advertising revenue. I see no other viable use for the thing.


Maybe I'm just a pessimist.



Edit: and I trust my cable provider or any smart tv maker, including Sony, as much as I do MS. They all are doing this shit for the same reason.

Well said. Microsoft's been late to every market they've tried to enter for a while now.
 
At any time Sony can spy on you if they want also. Every device that is connected to the internet is collecting data on you. If you have a problem with that then don't buy it. Apple and Google are collecting info on you right now with something you carry around everywhere in your pocket.

A wild mobius loop appears! A Sony Too rift opens up again! ryano9929 is trapped in a Cloud of Confusion.
 

rjcc

Member
I see, i respect that because it's your decision.



PS4.

LOL.

PS4, that's the one that lets me freely make copies of my games right?

Online multiplayer is free?

If they push a "security update" that takes away features later on can I decline it and still connect to the network?

No copy protection in it that stops me from playing my own video files, right?

I could go on
 

B.O.O.M

Member
The Sony too posts are hilarious...one would think after all the times it has been wrong people would stop using that..but nope
 
To me, buying an XB1 is like saying exactly how much you value your self-worth in privacy. And that cost $500. You vote to say, "Yes Microsoft. For $500 and a limited games selection, I will give you preliminary access to my house for advertising and I'll also pay you $60 a year for the privilege of using my console.". These consoles are hundred of dollars of investments, you NEED one to play the games that,are on it, it's not optional. And I can't understand why anyone would want an Xbox especially knowing Microsofts history when it comes to supporting it's hardware past the point where it starts selling itself.
i doubt people think like that, their getting it for games all that kinect/tv stuff is just a bonus if the person wants to use it for that
 
Top Bottom