Microsoft proves once and for all that it is clueless about what we want...or that it doesn't care.

Have you ever been caught in a shopping mall or office by a salesman(woman) who gives you a pitch?  You try to run away and you know you have no interest in what's being said...but for some reason, out of courtesy or fear, you hear them out until you finally make your excuses and run for the hills.  Do you remember how that person made you feel?  How you wanted to hit them?  Perhaps even deprive them of life?

Well Microsoft's recently announced 'feature' looks to be the result of yet another 'oh-so-ingenious-err-actually-no-it-isn't' pitch from the Xbox marketing division to its own corporate clients.  Meet Enrique de la Garza who stars in this IGN video talking about how wonderful Kinect+Xbox Ads+Social Networking can be by offering 'interactive' ads that you can shout at using Kinect's voice-recognition functionality.  I'll admit, as lame as 'interactive ads' sound, I was intrigued at first.  I imagined something like those clever web ads you see where you have to shoot a duck with your mouse cursor.  Perhaps they were going to do something like that using Kinect: I thought to myself.  Then I watched the video.

Get this.  In one example, you can interrupt an ad and tell Xbox to 'tweet' to a friend and then...voila!  Your friend gets a link to the ad on twitter!  Great, huh?

-err NO it isn't.  It's stupid.  Why the hell would I do that?  Why would I even watch the ad?  Even listening to the guy explaining the feature, it's quite obvious that this idea was born, developed and sold within the cubicle jungle of Microsoft headquarters.  At one point he says 'you know how social teens are' when attempting to explain the 'value' of being able to tweet an ad for Coke to a friend.  Well, I'm happy to say that I actually take enough time during my Thirty-something years to talk to teens and I'm pretty sure that they'd all agree that tweeting an ad by shouting a command at Kinect is one of the dumbest ideas on the planet. 

Microsoft's ignorant and condescending approach to researching one of its core target markets has found a new low with these so-called 'interactive ads.'  What's more, this just proves my original concerns in my last article that Microsoft is losing touch with the true desires of the consumer market.  While I thankfully did not actually purchase Kinect (it was given as a gift), I have been waiting for ages to justify the existence of this rather large and gaudy noddy-box sitting on top of my television.  Once again, yet another Kinect 'feature' comes along with no discernible value.  In fact, it has finally convinced me to take my Kinect off the TV and hock it on Ebay for whatever little I can get.  Maybe I can raise enough cash to get a copy of L.A. Noire; at least that way I get a chance to tell a smooth-talking fool that he's 'full of sh*t' directly to his face...and if he doesn't like it, I can shoot him. ;)