Goddamn that fucking Kinect! I knew it was the Devil. El Diablo! It wants to corrupt us! Sure it has us petting animals and playing volleyball, now. But in the future? Once the indoctrination is complete, it’ll have us stabbing our grandparents and bathing in the blood of purified newborns!

Don’t believe me? Here’s some more proof. It causes the dreaded Red Ring of Death. Maybe! Sensationalism? Sure.

According to the BBC, a nice, untainted British family bought a Kinect. And then their console died. Could this be coincidence? Absolutely not! Wink. According to 10 year-old Adam Winnifrith,  “We plugged it in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights. The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven’t been able to use it since.”

See! What more proof do you need? Fuck Kinect! It’s encouraging Big Brother. It’s going to result in robotic spy planes of death, and if that isn’t bad enough: it’ll kill your fucking Xbox 360.

Via.

Finally the dream I’ve been waiting to become reality. I don’t want to just feel like a retard while I’m playing World of Warcraft. No. I want to look like one. Alright, you got me. More like one. Now I can with this Kinect hack. Who doesn’t want to waggle their arms, lean forward, lean back, and other things to control their WoW character? Probably everyone! We’re fat, and gelatinous. By and large. We like the sitting.

Hit the jump to see a dude play WoW with Kinect, which makes it look a lot like aerobics.

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Well, it was only a matter of time. Sex game company ThriXXX has finally done the perv world a solid and hacked Kinect. They didn’t just hack it for fun, no sir. They hacked it to create a virtual interface for rubbing boobs, butts, and down the road: a lot more.

They want to add full-body support and voice commands.

I gotta level with you guys. I’m a goddamn pervert, and even I find this shit uncomfortable. There’s something about menacingly rubbing some virtual chick’s bits as she stares emptily at you that creeps me the fuck out. Though, I’m sure, this will only turn (a lot of ) people on moreso.

Hit the jump for this beauty (?) in motion.

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Goddammit! Haven’t we learned anything. I was pretty sure that all this fucking around we’re doing with the Kinect is going to bring about the robot apocalypse. And now I’m getting more sure. The mad scientists over at the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Berkeley have used the Kinect to construct an autonomous flying machine.

Kotaku:

Instead of being hooked up to an Xbox 360 to play games, Kinect is sending visual data to a Linux box onboard the mini-copter, letting the quadrotor fly autonomously, detect its own altitude and avoid obstacles. A back-up motion capture device provides other data–lateral and yaw–and provides a safety back up for altitude detection, should Kinect fail at some point.

It seems cool now, but when they’re used to fly over cities and drop nuclear caches, we’re going to be seriously displeased with these guys.

Hit the jump for the video of it flying. It’s amazing. And terrifying.

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So, despite my distaste for Kinect, I continue to chronicle the odd shit that the device is being co-opted to do. We’ve got lightsabers, and now we’ve got it being used to remotely control a robot. Oh good lord! Haven’t we all learned from Terminator? Next thing we know, this son of a bitch is going to go sentient, and then begin using the Kinect webcam to cyber robosex other mechanical non-organic beings.

It’s happening!

But no, seriously. Hit the jump to see Kinect as a means to remotely control a robot.

The apocalypse marches forward.

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This is the sort of dorky, bonerfying bullshit that makes me want a Kinect. The ability to act like an asshole, and total techno-wankery. I stipulated in the past that geeks hacking the Kinect are going to pull off some impractical, useless, but cool things. Case in point baby! Case. In. Point. As many have said, now we can all act like Lightsaber Kid in the glory of our own home. A real time tracking and rendering lightsaber on your computer monitor.

Dorky. Cool. Useless. Wankery. Well done.

Hit the jump for video.

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I can no longer worry about whether or not Kinect is going to succeed. I can no longer worry about whether or not yet another console is going to be indoctrinated into gimmicky, motion control bullshit. I can no longer worry about whether or not the Xbox 360 can stuff all those grandparents and happy family advertisements down the fucking Sarlacc Pit they belong in, incinerating their insipid banality into a forgotten realm of bullshit.

Who gives a shit if it’s gimmicky bullshit? Who gives a shit if it’s clearly spying on you for Big Brother Microsoft Cola? No ones.

I should have known better. Kinect isn’t just selling, it’s selling like fucking hot cakes.

Reuters:

Microsoft Corp said on Monday it has sold more than 1 million of its new hands-free Kinect gaming systems in the first 10 days since launch, putting it on track to beat its target of 5 million sales by the end of the year.

Son of a fucking bitch. Oh well. What does it really mean in the long run? A lot more units solid for the Micro-softs, right? They’ve totally out Wii’d the Wii. No longer must you sling phallic device! Now you dance your way into stupidity with Grandma! Watch as she dances her dying tribal dance! Watch as Papa’s hearing aid falls out in the middle of a lovely game of The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout! and the family cat dies from choking on it.

As long as it doesn’t affect the actual like, games being produced, I’m fine. There can be mountains of bullshit titles out there featuring Kinect-based controls, as long as I get my legitimate installments. But with news that there’s a Gears of War-related Kinect announcement soon, I fear! I fear the infection is spreading.

The bunkers, we must climb into them. The hatches, we must latch.

You fucking assholes.

Someone call the fucking Thought Police, cause Kinect is staring at you, reporting you to Big Brother. Seriously, how fucking creepy is this?

Kotaku:

Speaking at an investor’s conference on Thursday, a Microsoft executive offered that Kinect not only knows how many are in the room when an ad’s shown, but what kind of team colors they might be wearing. Uh-oh.

How Orwellian is this shit? This sounds amazingly like the point in 1984 when everyone has to go through their morning exercise routines while the television prompter watched. Except now, they’ve merely tricked you into playing Dance Central Titty And Dong Shake Time. Yessir. It’s the same deal. They’re spying on you. But they wised up, and they’re not as obvious about it as they were in Orwell’s novel. They wised up, and drizzled their eerie spying in glitter and pom-poms!

Creepy shit! I mean, instead of being forced into this creepy Big Brother environment, we’re instead giving the keys to our souls willingly to giant corporations and marketing entities. But watch the fuck out next time you’re boning your hand in front of your Kinect! Kinect sees all. Kinect knows all. Kinect is selling your attributes to the highest bidder, so they can stream advertisements subliminally into your skull while you sleep at night. Laugh all you want, it’s fucking happening!

Looking for more reasons to hate Kinect? Well, how about that piece of shit that costs $150 only costs $56 to put together? Would that chap your ass? Ignite your asshole in rage?

Destructoid:

We all know Microsoft is selling Kinect at a tidy profit, but according to a recent report on the cost of parts, it borders on the obscene. The parts to put Kinect together cost roughly $56, meaning the $150 gadget is raking in quite a few pennies per sale.

“Basically, the strength of the design is the huge design win for the Israeli fabless company PrimeSense,” says  UBM TechInsights marketing manager  Allan Yogasingam. “They’ve provided the most innovative portion of the Kinect with their image processor, audio and video interface.”

I think the obvious caveat is that this son of a bitch cost a fucking shit ton in research and development. So although they may be able to slap this thing together relatively cheaply, there’s some serious money that went into creating it. I mean, fuck, the original prototype cost $30,000. Still though, you have to sit there and irrationally swear that they’re marking the piece of crap up a hundred dollars. Just ignore the other side of the argument and get pissed fanboys and fangirls. Pissed!

Theo Watson is a man with some impressive skills. Well, to me at least. I don’t know if he’s like, totally wizard or whatever to other geniuses. But to me? Dude is awesome. The good chap has hacked a Microsoft Kinect, and gotten it to run on a Mac OS. Barely a week after launch! Guffaw! I don’t know the practical applications of it up to this point, but I’m not sure there’s a practical application I can think of for Kinect, in any regard.

None the less, it’s pretty cool. And with this talented man opening up the Kinect to the Mac OS, I can only assume it’ll thusly open up possibility for other people to fuck around with.

Hit the jump for a video of it in motion.

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