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    led to a dramatic decline in customer satisfaction for the Redmond-based tech giant.

The Xbox "One" release isn't looking anymore appealing either. Has to phone home every 24 hours or won't work, potentially making it a pseudo online only device. Comes with Kinect as part of the system, can't be disconnected, always on, and as such always listening and watching (I hate to reference 1984's telescreens, but yeah... I am). Games for it will not be able to be traded, sold, or used by more than one account, as they now come with a code that ties it to your profile. Only way to play it another Xbox will be to transfer your profile. Essentially killing the buying/selling used games or trade markets.

Seems silly to make such a jump from the Xbox 360, I'm not much of a gamer but I found this all surprising. Hopefully they wise up and yank some of these "features" before launch. If it has an always on Kinect that I can't turn off, I'll never have one in my home. Call me paranoid, but that's an invasion of privacy for me, considering how capable of a system it is. It's one thing to have Google scan my email and deliver advertising based on that, it's another to have a device watching me in the privacy of my own home with the intent to do the same.

Seems like MS is looking at companies like Apple and EA for inspiration. Closed markets, locking things down, and hoping advertising, flashy marketing, and slick looking products won't alienate a lot of people despite all these shortcomings.

I'm about as MS fanboy as they come, but I can't and won't defend Win8, nor the Xbox One.