Microsoft and Sony are walking a fine line with the level of connectivity in their new machines. They're introducing amazing technology that will be present in every gamers household for the next 5-10 years and are promising new and better gaming experiences than we've ever had before. All this sounds great until you start thinking back to your high school English class and the omnipresent government run by Big Brother in the book 1984. Then a scummy haze starts to blanket all the fantastic features and the beady red eyes watching our every move become visible. How's that for hyperbole? These devices are coming extremely close to the propagandizing found in that book by promoting mindless purchasing based on crowd mentality and constant surveillance with cameras and recorded purchasing patterns. All this being possible through the user simply pressing a button (or uttering two words).

I don't see a lot of talk about the privacy issues of all the sharing and trending features that have been added to both the PS4 and the Xbox One. During the Playstation 4 reveal I remember being a little skeptical and worried about the sharing functions:

• Real name usernames
• Facebook integration
• Guessing which games you may want to download based on purchase history and other unknown factors

A Google search says that many of these functions will be able to be disabled but, disabled features don't necessarily stop the information being present on the device. After the hack on the Playstation Network I think it's justifiable to be skeptical of how secure this information is and who it is being shared with. Even today many companies (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc...) keep track of users browsing history and sell users purchasing habits to other companies in completely legal ways. I find that to be incredibly shady but apparently it's great for business and that stands above personal privacy. Sony and Microsoft may already be using these practices today but it seems like these devices are designed around making this info more useful and accessible to businesses.

While the Playstation 4 reveal had a huge focus on social functionality it was the Xbox One that really left a bad taste in my mouth. Most of this due to the vagueness of all the answers offered about online connectivity and purchasing rights.

• The Kinect will be in a suspended state at all times and is capable of reading my mood and heart rate. Sure, that is incredibly useful for sports and exercise games but I can think of a few sinister ways an always connected camera could be used right off the top of my head.
• Players will no longer be able to lend games to friends without a fee. This to me is imposing on a customers purchasing rights but I don't think it's fair to criticize it just yet as the Microsoft reps didn't seem to come to any kind of consensus on this. Who knows what is actually going to be happening on the console. I'm sure their using the response of the internet to determine how much they can get away with.
• A system that must connect to the internet once every 24 hours or else some functionality will be disabled. To me there is no reason to do this besides updating advertisements. This has been talked to death for the past few months but the lack of closure or reasoning during the reveal and the following press releases was not comforting. A required connection for this machine to work seems like a step back in accessibility and an easy way to constantly keep track of what their user base is doing. Again, great for business but iffy on consumer rights. Microsoft is taking whatever sized chunk of bandwidth that I pay for and reserving it for a system that I may or may not be using.
• Trending. Not a new one considering Twitter has trended that word already but still an important issue. This information is gathered and shared with the entire user base. What I gathered from the reveal is they want everything I do and buy on their console to be recorded somewhere as a statistic. These numbers will be shared with the world (anonymously to be fair) and included within the dashboard of every system.

The future is extremely exciting and stuff like this could change gaming for the better. I know that these companies are thinking much further than we are and in ways that we couldn't imagine. But I see a lack of intelligent discussion about what some of these functions open the door to. I don't see Microsoft or Sony addressing it at all. I don't think there is some conspiracy that Microsoft and Sony are here to brainwash the world but I do think it's important to look at how necessary or dangerous some of the "trends" they are creating or improving on can be.