Xbox One’s Kinect won’t harvest marketing data from its users, Microsoft recently told All Things D.
This is in response to Advertising Age’s story last week, which reportedly misinterpreted a quote from marketing and strategy vice president Yusuf Mehdi. Mehdi’s original statement concerns Microsoft’s attempt to “bridge some of the world between online and offline.”
“We have a pretty unique position at Microsoft because of what we do with digital, as well as more and more with television because of Xbox,” Mehdi told Advertising Age. “It’s early days, but we’re starting to put that together in more of a unifying way, and hopefully at some point we can start to offer that to advertisers broadly.”
According to a statement from Microsoft, however, the quote “is not in relation” to the Kinect. Mehdi was simply referring to content the Xbox One can carry into different platforms.
“For example, just as Xbox SmartGlass allows companion mobile experiences that are synchronous to what is being watched on TV, advertisers could create new experiences unifying their content across devices,” Microsoft told All Things D via email.
“We have a long-standing commitment to your privacy and will not target ads to you based on any data Kinect collects unless you choose to allow us to do so.”
Last week, director of product planning Albert Penello took to NeoGAF to assure forum users that the Kinect was not designed with ad functionality in mind.
