There was no bigger story this week than the launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. After years of rumor, speculation, and hopeful dreaming, the tech world’s most entertaining platforms slipped into a new world where games don’t have start screens anymore, consoles are constantly watching, and you can surveil anyone’s play time you want. Here are some of the week’s biggest stories, a number of which remind us the walled architecture of our play machines are often microcosms that reflect and intensify the limits of the new digital trappings we always seem to be stumbling through.
Michael Thomsen is Complex's tech columnist. He has written for Slate, The Atlantic, The New Inquiry, n+1, Billboard, and is author of Levitate the Primate: Handjobs, Internet Dating, and Other Issues for Men. He tweets often at @mike_thomsen.