Did Kinect's Times Square launch go well?
Queues for three blocks, apparently.
Last night Microsoft hired out New York's iconic Times Square to launch Kinect to North Americans. And with such an audacious event came the need to put on a bloody good show. By all accounts, that's exactly what happened.
Kotaku took pictures of rapper/crooner Ne-Yo leading hundreds of dancers in a choreographed routine. You could say he was the controller. Those pictures also showed how not only all traffic through Times Square was blocked for the evening, but how all of Times Square's gigantic televisions flaunted Kinect-based advertising throughout.
Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb shared pictures via Twitter of the Kinect stockpile moments before launch and Xbox 360 boss Don Mattrick selling his new motion-sensing camera to the first person in line.
The queue was said to stretch for three blocks.
Microsoft US bigwig Aaron Greeberg was astounded by what he saw. "Kinect has taken over all of Times Square... Never seen anything like it," he tweeted. He too shared a picture from the event, this time of a Kinect advert on a Times Square telly.
Website Broadway World also shared some snaps, this time of surprise guest, actor Mark Wahlberg. He looked muscular in grey.
Kinect is on sale now in North America. Expect statistics and a Microsoft PR cacophony when they wake up.
Microsoft has set a target of 5 million Kinect sales by the end of 2010. (What we need now is a Blue Peter-style fund raising tube-graph to keep track of Kinect's progress on.)
With the US launch of Kinect came a global lift of the embargo surrounding the device and all related games. You can find Eurogamer's comprehensive platter of Kinect analysis elsewhere.