I'd say fishy, but as long as enough people can't smell it, it can keep on getting away with it... So smart is a correct definition, after all.

Tried it in San Fransisco.. it was cute and frustrating. A bunch of rules on what i couldn't do when i played with it, and i would not recommend the product to anyone that currently plays the industry's definition of AA or AAA games. Also stay away if you tend to only play big budget games, games above 85 review scores, story based, rpgs or multiplayer focused games. Its not a "motion control gaming device" in the sence one would think. Its more of a tracking device with a user interface. 

I wouldnt recommend casual Wii gamers to pick it up either, its more for people who likes EyePet, arrange guitar hero/dance mat parties, or is between the ages of 4 to 10. In gamer lables, its more in the sense of people who would like to boot up their game console and big screen tv just to play an out of placed iPhone type game with a bad interface.

Its hard to describe. Its basicly.. you know how some games/products just does it right, while the rest tries to get a piece of the pie with similar games/products, but they never quite feel as smooth or as much of a homerun as the first one. Thats kind of like how it is with this.

Right ...

If it is true that Microsoft is actually trying to avoid pre-launch negative press I certainly wouldn't call this a "smart" move. Strategies like this have been tried several times in a lot of different markets, and (more often than not) it backfires on the company.

The most successful form of marketing is an honest word of mouth campaign; at the same time, the most damaging delivery of negative information is an honest word of mouth campaign. While tricking people into buying into a poor product may save some initial sales, you will lose far more sales in the long run when these people "Talk Trash" about your product whenever it comes up in conversation.

But never underestimate MS' astroturfers army, both payed and those licking Ballmer's arse for free (the only possible explanation for this is that he secerns cocaine and they got addicted  ), MS, also with their help and relentless propaganda work, managed even to sell Win ME, or Win 2000 before SP4 or Win XP before SP2, heck, it managed to sell even Vista!

http://apcmag.com/xp_still_killing_vista_in_sales_volume_hp.htm

However, HP explained how Microsoft is coming up with these "Vista" sales figures.

"From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence," said Jane Bradburn, Market Development Manager, Commercial Notebooks for HP Australia.

"However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today."

So, in other words, Microsoft counts a sale for Vista, even though the computer manufacturer has really sold XP.

Astroturfers, marketing, and "propaganda" rarely work to sell a poor product; but people who are tricked or forced into buying a poor product generally give that product a reputation far worse than it should have had. Vista is the perfect example of this because it was a product that had many improvements over their previous version (XP) but had many flaws at launch and by the time those were (mostly) corrected everyone "knew" it was the worst operating system in history.

I hope Kinect actually works, just so I can see how quiet this thread will become.

I've answered your other points twice I don't see much point in discussing them further.  Businesses have marketing budgets to be used.  Not all marketing money will be out of the Microsoft coffers.  I doubt the figure of 500 million is 10 fold their usual budget for a year especially when you consider how much they've spent on superbowl advertisements and branding none gaming items for sale in the past.

As for the bolded, there is at least two people in here that took your words and understood the meaning to be different to what you claim you intended.  In my opinion that makes you as the writer to blame not the reader.  I don't see what else there is to discuss as my opinion hasn't changed really and obviously yours neither. 

kowenicki said:  "first kinect review"    SEARCH About 19,500,000 results (0.11 seconds)

FYI, you need to put your search term in inverted commas in Google if you want it to pick up that term the way you typed it, otherwise it'll search for anything containing any of those words, with or without the other words.  There's a massive difference otherwise; search with inverted commas, 4 results; search without inverted commas 19.9M results.

Nomad Blue said: kowenicki said:  "first kinect review"    SEARCH About 19,500,000 results (0.11 seconds) FYI, you need to put your search term in inverted commas in Google if you want it to pick up that term the way you typed it, otherwise it'll search for anything containing any of those words, with or without the other words.  There's a massive difference otherwise; search with inverted commas, 4 results; search without inverted commas 19.9M results.

Still, whatever point he was trying to make was completely lost, as their have not been, nor will there be, any gaming sites or publications that will be able to have a real review of Kinect until it actually releases.

Well its funny how Shadowblind who was the first person to reply to the message knew exactly what I was saying. If I meant something differant like what yous said I meant then I'd be having this conversation with Shadowblind and not yous.