Kinect with reality, please

Microsoft Kinect. Price: $150. Cost: Your pride.

Tonight at midnight, Microsoft's Kinect will launch in North America. Consisting of a variety of cameras, 3D sensors, and a microphone, Kinect is a peripheral add-on for Xbox360 that "maps out" a room and the people within it. Using this 3D map, Kinect allows users to interact with their Xbox360 using their body motions and gestures.

If you haven't heard about Kinect yet, you can likely consider yourself one of the (lucky) few. Microsoft has spent an absolute fortune marketing its new device in the hopes that casual entertainment users (read: those who have never played a game before) will buy an Xbox and Kinect and pick up one of the 17 Kinect launch games. These casual users have never played a game because they were "intimidated by the controller" according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

The theory, then, is that by removing the controller from the gaming equation, non-gamers will be tempted to pick up a console and start dancing around, pretending to hold a steering wheel to drive in racing games, and generally look like a fool (all in the name of "fun", of course).

With Microsoft's marketing blitz (its largest marketing campaign ever for anything related to Xbox), it seems they are poised to succeed initially. Microsoft expects to sell 5 million units this holiday season, and launch events are taking place all over North America. Tonight, gamers and non-gamers alike will join in celebrating a device that seemingly bridges the gap between them that Nintendo Wii helped bridge years ago.

Tomorrow, gamers and non-gamers alike will stare blankly at their new device and wonder why they spent so much money on it.

The concept for Kinect is fundamentally flawed. Microsoft's take on the device is that it lets users interact with games the same way they do in real life. It does not take a genius to see the flaw in this theory - people interact with physical objects in the real world. I turn a door knob to open it. I flip a switch to turn on a light. I hold a steering wheel to drive.

Kinect lets you mimic these things; it lets you mime them.

Now Kinect has some potential applications. Games that monitor your movements and provide feedback on your dancing skills are the perfect application for this technology. Pretending to hold a steering wheel is not. Pretending to fire a gun with your fingers is not. Pretending to fight an opponent is not. Pretending to ride a skateboard is not.

And make no mistake - Kinect is all about pretending.

A video of a Star Wars game surfaced when Microsoft began pumping the hype machine for Kinect. In it, an actor pretended to wield a lightsaber and eventually clashed against Darth Vader's saber. People went crazy for this video and talked about the infinite possiblities of such a game. However, they failed to realize (at least at first), that 1) the video was clearly fake/staged, and 2) when clashing light sabers it was the actor pretending to have physical resistance when obviously there was no such thing.

I am all for pretend light saber battles and pretend shooting. Every toddler does it. But why on Earth would anyone want to pay $150 (or upwards of $400 if they don't own an Xbox360) just to do what they can do at any point in their lives?

Kinect is one of the biggest jokes in the world today, but not many people see the punch line. It is one of the worst ideas in recent memory that seems poised for resounding success. My heart can only sink and my brain can only deteriorate trying to figure out what the world is coming to when such a blatantly useless device can capture the hearts and minds of so many.

There is no doubt in my mind that when the hype of launch settles down and early adopters are stuck staring blankly at their new device, they will connect with the harsh, yet brutally simple reality - Kinect sucks.