Besides the expansivity of Microsoft’s pockets, the histrionic stupidity of E3 in general and the fact that there is no depth to which praseodymium team will not sink, given sufficient quantity of caffein – no ill-treatment of the brain, knee articulatio and bladder they will not contemplate – the one thing last night’s corrie Delaware Soleil extravaganza should have re-impressed upon you is that Kinect is ‘for everyone’. linguistic universal entreaty was the company line at the peripheral’s unveiling a year back, and universal appeal remains the company line today.

Trouble is, Microsoft’s ‘everyone’ does not, in actual fact, concealment everyone. Rather, this ‘everyone’ is the latest in . series of imaginary buying demographic mass-produced by the like of Erythroxylon coca Cola, MacDonalds and Nintendo – another encore for that classic commercial quartet, the nuclear menage Jovial, pipe-smoking pa Supportive, apron-clad mummy Little Joey with his model airplane, and Sally with her pigtails. There’s no room in the icon for the heavy-duty, isolationist, Call-of-Duty-spamming ‘gamer’s gamers’ with whom the Xbox 360 has been hitherto associated. No room for you, if our approximation of our readership is correct, and definitely no room for me.

The point was judicial writ large in the form of some disgracefully shiny lifestyle demo reels, four madly-grinning, All-American histrion jiggling in front of various Microsoft-branded shades of Wii Sports and EyeToy. Meanwhile, on the flooring of the area itself, dehydrated journalist glanced unit of ammunition frantically for means of flight or, failing that, suicide.

Specialist report of the Kinect reveal have been almost universally negative, lambasting everything from the stage dancing through the canned clapping to the high technical school yet patronising try at audience interaction . We’d love to suggest that Microsoft wasn’t anticipating this response, but the opposite is probably true The publisher’s real invitee of honor were the ‘mainstream’ commentators, not the dependably cynical hardcore fourth estate – safely unacquainted with terms like ‘latency’ or ‘pre-rendered’, and rather more susceptible perhaps to diversionary razzmatazz.

GOOD JOB, MOM.

As far as its traditional consumer are concerned, much now hinge on the company’s conference this eventide , where the majority of Kinect-enabled third party titles are expected to make post alongside pricing details, release date and a more comprehensive account of product scheme Having stoked much chin-wag and mystery over both the creative person formerly known as labor Natal and the precise nature of its E3 offering, the big M has stumbled at the first hurdle, and it’ll take more than another fancy lightshow to restore the balance.

Kinect is due out in Nov Why not refresh your memory of our first look piece?