The gender wars aspect of gaming is quite prevalent, but we have very few actual statistics on the breakdown between male and female gamers. Some studies show that it's nearly 50/50, and then other people see that and say that it's only 50/50 because of crappy facebook games, and those people say that most women don't play "hardcore" games, and someone else will say that people who think that way are sexist assholes, and so on, and so on.

The thing is, we never really get many actual statistics and facts about the subject. The closest thing to an actual stat concerning "hardcore gaming" that I'm aware of is that "18% of Mass Effect 3 players choose to play as a female protagonist." And while this does tell us a little about the number of people who choose to play as a female, it's not an actual gender breakdown.

Now, as much as I'm opposed to a requirement of having a camera aimed at me while I play video games in the privacy of my own home--a camera so advanced that it can read your pulse and see your heartbeat--and although I never intend to buy an Xbox One, I do wonder what else the Kinect could potentially tell us about gamers.

While I've not read an article that says one way or another, If the kinect could see gender or estimate age, it could provide an insane amount of data on questions that publishers would kill for. Imagine actually having an answer to these current unknowns:

What is the ratio of women to men who play first-person shooters?

What is the ratio of women to men who play dance games?

What is the ratio of women to men who play racing games?

What is the ratio of women to men who play puzzle games?

What is the ratio of women to men who play horror games?

What is the ratio of women to men who play tournament fighters?

And beyond that, what if Kinect could tell the difference between children and short adults?

What is the ratio of children to adults who play "M" rated titles?

What is the ratio of children to adults who play Call of Duty, compared to those who play Battlefield?

Now I think you can all see how this data would be an absolute goldmine for Microsoft, but then the question becomes how would they use it? Would they publish some of it publicly? Would they sell it to publishers? Would publishers be granted access to the data in exchange for some form of exclusivity?

And while this is going a bit beyond the initial intent of this thread, if the Kinect can read changes in your heartbeat or pulse, what if the Kinect can "see" your response to advertising? Personally, this all sounds a lot more invasive than I am willing to allow, but the data it could reveal is unprecedented.

Call it by it's true name. Skynet can do a lot more than that. It was made to rule.

INB4 Xbox is insensitive to transgendered folks.

I think it looks more like the HAL 9000, personally.

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you play that."

I think if it could, I think it'd see that there's really more of a blur between gender preferences than we may think when it comes to games (and pop culture in general, if it can track Netflix too). I don't know how the One would be able to tell gender to begin with, though.

....If you let it! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh man! WHOOOOO!

....

....Know what I mean.?...well w/e.

It reads gender by scanning for boobies.

Will it detect that I'm a queer-sexual female wolf trapped in a man's body, though?

@rowr said:

If that's true then there are a lot of young men about to feel real bad when their game console calls them a girl.

"I want to know if Peter Dinklage will be able to watch Game of Thrones." - Norman Chan, Internet Person.

@medacris: I'm assuming breasts and body temperature. I'm sure our penises give off more heat in a distinguishable area than a vagina does.

With that, I do believe its possible the Kinect could, maybe not completely accurate, give data on these exact statistics. If it does, then I hope that's the time people won't buy the system and will put them in the garbage. I want to say Microsoft isn't stupid enough to do this, but given I saw them advertise Star Trek, ESPN and EA during a press conference advertising their gaming console, I don't know if I can trust them much anymore. It's bad enough their dashboard advertises. I am starting to see where Microsoft is becoming more interested in profiting from the corporate advertising sector vs profiting off games.

A console is a one time purchase and their board meetings are about increasing revenue post sale with dashboard advertisements and partnerships through apps (xbox, buy me a movie ticket). Yeh, I was Microsoft this console generation, I'm done being treated like the product vs the console is MY product. I'm probably going to pass on the Xbox.

I'd just like to point out the obvious, that any of this data would only show the ratios in the number of people who bought the Xbox One not people who play games in general.

I'd say fuck it and turn the Kinect into the Hal 9000.

Well, yeah. But unless you think that the age or male to female ratio of players on different consoles will for some reason be quite different, it could tell us a lot about who plays games.

So, did anyone ever hear any solid info on this? I'm still wondering.

I doubt it. The difference between genders is only subtle, in comparison with like having arms and a heartbeat. But you can probably can get a height distribution of the players. But I doubt this will tell you much.

@spaceinsomniac: While there's no way it could be 100% accurate, I do believe the Kinect 2 could very likely make a reasonable estimate of their users' gender. People developed apps for the original Kinect which could differentiate gender by reading voice samples from them, to within a decent degree of accuracy, and the Kinect 2 could likely combine both audio and visual information to easily make a guess. Though, it would always remain a guess.

Ultimately, this may not really provide them more information on people's gender than the fact that Xbox accounts ask for people's gender. So, they certainly have data for those who have created accounts on the Xbox, and it's likely about as accurate as a camera and mic system making rough guesses.

You briefly touched on the most-likely useful nature of such monitoring. Which would be telling whether or not someone is paying attention and where they are paying attention. Microsoft demo'd the Kinect 2 accurately showing where someone's eyes were looking on the screen, and that could be used to optimize how they advertise things. It could also be used by game designers for optimizing user interfaces, as well. Though, it depends on how much of this information is simply managed locally and what is sent server-side. There is plenty of potential here, but we won't really know much for certain until the console gets out amongst consumers.