Aaron Paul’s Xbox One ad accidentally powers on people’s gaming consoles

By Loren Grush June 14, 2014

breaking bad alum aaron paul will star in hulus the way xbox one — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Aaron Paul is a real turn on — for gaming consoles, that is.

It turns out that a new Xbox One commercial featuring the Breaking Bad star is inadvertently powering up people’s Xbox machines without their permission.

In the ad, Paul sits on a couch and issues the voice command “Xbox on” to power up his console and play a video game. But just as the Xbox in the commercial is actively listening for his voice command, so are all the other Xbox Ones sitting in people’s living rooms.

So when the commercial plays on TV, at-home gamers may notice their own Xbox perking up as well.

Many Xbox One owners have taken to Reddit and Twitter to complain about the fluke, with some claiming the ad even causes games like Titanfall to launch on their machines.

But according to Business Insider, there is an easy fix. Users can always disconnect their Xbox One’s Kinect motion sensor, which is responsible for actively listening for voice commands. Or people can just mute their TVs during commercial breaks, if they’re really that committed to keeping their Xbox off.

Now the real question is: Was this just some unintended consequence of the commercial or part of Microsoft’s master plan to subtly encourage gamers to play their Xbox One as much as possible?

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Loren Grush is a science and health writer living in New York City, having written for Fox News Health, Fox News SciTech and…

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