Why the Kinect Demonstration Won't Hurt Microsoft

Myself and many of those reading this article already know a lot about technology. It was not difficult for us to tell that Microsoft's performance of Kinect wasn't done completely live, and we probably weren't that surprised either. After all, Microsoft did do the same thing when showing off "Project Natal" for the first time. Movements were often done on stage after they were already shown on screen. Plus in some of the few demos in which movements weren't early, they were so late that it either showcased terrible response lag or that again the demonstration was pre-recorded. To us, this seems like a huge hit for Microsoft. But think about how the general public, who has a completely different view will conceive Kinect.

Short story short, I watched Microsoft's E3 conference with a few friends. They are not the worst with technology and computers, but they aren't technology savvy. While showing off Kinect's "capabilities", I was amazed at how unprofessional and unprepared Microsoft actually was for their conference. Meanwhile, my two friends were dumbfounded at how amazing Kinect looked. They were unable to notice the obviously recorded material shown on screen. I just remained quiet, didn't want to ruin the excitement.

The idea here is that at least 50-60% of the people who buy Kinect are not going to be as informed about these fake demos as others. They will just see commercials that are also professionally edited to show Kinect as the exciting, revolutionary device that it was supposed to be. Microsoft is a very smart company with all the connections in the world to ensure that their image is not tarnished by this quietly terrible performance at E3. Not to mention, the release of the New "Xbox 360 S" will overshadow Kinect for a while. It's also entirely possible that Kinect CAN do what we expected of it. Microsoft may have just been playing it safe. Think about it, how embarrassing would it be to get RRoD mid show? After all Microsoft can't do anything wrong after making the Xbox 360, right? (crickets)