Yes it's all due to Oprah. It has absolutley nothing to do with the major TV and internet advertising campaign that started last week.

Consumers are sheep.  That's the whole point of advertising.  We are conditioned to consume on an enormous scale. 

Personally, I like to consume to a near Nero like capacity.  I think the only thing that has saved me from total ruination is the ability to occasionally look up from the trough and observe just how deep in the swine I am, but that's too depressing and eventually I dive back in.

Lets not forget the product has to actually appeal to them.

Calling them sheep downplays the sheer awesomeness of the Kinect. The mass marketing exist because of the massive interest being shown in the product.

All talk of babt seals aside:

Interesting the standalone Kinect gets the biggest jump. I wonder if it's people ordering it who already have 360, or people who think that it might be a stand alone console and they don't realise you need a 360 to use it. This is a response to an Oprah show after all, some people who watch that show could make such a mistake.

Honestly I expected a much bigger spike for the console Kinect bundles. Surely the reason to go on a show like Oprah isn't only to get Kinect sales up, but to also push more 360's themselves (obviously did have that effect, but double digit  increasing sales from a relatively low base level of pre-orders is only mildly impressive.

Well the only thing I watch on TV is Oprah, and since when did they start advertising things on the internet?

sales jumped from 0 units to 0 units, impressive - ah yea there certainly were some new pre-orders after Kinect was shown at Oprah

I am going to have to start questioning why people still think Amazons sales are a poor barometer. They are now the number 1 online retailer so any information about sales is going to be important. I grant you it is frought with danger but to dismiss it because of where Amazon was positioned some 2 or more years ago is folly.

Also moving on to the "oprah" effect. She very clearly does have an effect in the US and the very market Microsoft are after you could say is Oprah's audience. So yeah they whooped it up but you only have to watch the HSN network sell 2000 overpriced 4GB Kinect bundles in 15 minutes to understand that Kinect has the potentially to be huge in the casual market.

I'll bet she can even sell a turd..

Oprah can sell ice to eskimos.