Oprah Gives Away Kinect to Everyone in Her Audience

On yesterday’s Oprah Winfrey Show, she gave away an Xbox 360 with Kinect to all the lucky ladies in her studio audience.

Oprah Winfrey has been known to give away some big ticket items to the members of her studio audience. It started back in 2004 when she gave 276 new Pontiac cars to each member of her audience (never mind the fact that the “lucky” recipients had to pay up to $7k in taxes for the “prize” they didn’t know they were getting.) Then last month she gave away an 8-day trip to Sydney, Australia to everyone in the audience, this time vowing to pay the taxes herself. Oprah’s show yesterday had a Kinect segment in which she recorded herself dancing for Jon Stewart. Not to be outdone, Microsoft asked Oprah to give everyone in the audience for yesterday’s show a brand new Xbox 360 bundled with a Kinect. The crowd, conveniently decked with girls and their moms, went appropriately nuts.

Even though Oprah seems genuinely enthusiastic, she doesn’t seem completely comfortable with the terminology. She pronounces Kinect like Kee-nect and her short summary of what it does seems forced and right out of Microsoft’s PR playbook.

Still, you can’t get much more mainstream than Oprah. If her audience is as psyched to get Kinect as they seem, perhaps the motion control system will be a huge hit.