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Originally Posted by photon
I understand and I certainly don't have any specific paranoia about the Xbox One or any other connected device, however we've seen in the past that companies have overstepped boundaries (intentionally and unintentionally) about collecting information without telling their users.
So while I'm not paranoid that Xbox is going to be sending a constant stream of info, I'd also not be very surprised if it was found that it was in fact sending more information than it should, like gathering information about how much time someone spends in front of the TV or something. Even if it was simply a coding mistake or someone not being aware of everything that's going on; complex systems sometimes have unintended behaviours.
If I were designing the Xbox One, I would want people to be able to run it without the camera entirely, because people sometimes want to take it over to their friend's house, or travel with it, or move it to another TV temporarily, and requiring it plugged in just makes it more complex. EDIT: Meant to say that because they require it to be plugged in is somewhat suggestive, makes me want to pay attention to what people will find out about what the Xbox One is doing in its leisure time anyway.
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See, and everything photon said makes perfectly good sense. There's no arm-flailing paranoia here, all very reasonable points. I agree with you on pretty well everything you just said.
The only thing I would really need to respond to is the point about taking it to a friend's place. Because Kinect 2.0 is intended to be part of every game experience in some facet, taking your Xbox One without the Kinect sensor would be like taking your Xbox 360 without the controllers... or maybe with the controllers, but only one half of the buttons working. You get what I mean.
Certainly, it could be argued that they could have just bundled Kinect 2.0 into every SKU all the while keeping it an optional accessory, but among other things (voice commands, Skype integration) I would speculate it is also a play to drive adoption. It makes it easier for developers because they can choose to use the Kinect sensor and not be worried about the game experience being neutered for non-Kinect owners. Plenty of games flat out required a Kinect sensor in the previous model, and that takes out a big chunk of potential consumers when you consider that not every Xbox 360 has a Kinect hooked up to it.
Plus, if at some point the user DID want to leverage Kinect features, "oh crap, I think mom threw the box away with the Kinect inside" isn't going to be a problem (speaking from personal experience of boxes my mom threw away that had important bits of things inside.)
If the goal is to make sure the user has the best possible experience, they should just be able to hit a tile and the service they picked should just work without having to plug more stuff in. Same reason that Microsoft originally mandated minimum hardware requirements for Windows Phones - consistency of the user experience across models ... though it seems that has been relaxed a bit and now we're seeing the problem with that relaxation, such as Lumia 610 users not being able to download/use Skype on their handsets without developer-unlocking the handset and sideloading it.