Oprah Gives Away Kinect to Everyone in Her Audience

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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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.

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uppitycracker

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Oct 9, 2008
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you could probably tell them they all have their very own box of anthrax under their seats, and they'd go nuts, simply because they're on the damn oprah show.
 

Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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I don't care about the Kinect part, but the fact that a couple of hundred women are getting given an Xbox 360 by a mainstream television hostess is promising that people in the media might start opening their damn minds to gaming.
 
Oct 14, 2010
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"Oprah's show yesterday had a Kinect segment in which she recorded herself dancing for Jon Stewart."

Poor, poor Jon Stewart.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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Greg Tito said:
(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.)
At least it wasn't over 9k then, she seems to have come unstuck with that particular number.
 

rileyrulesu

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Jun 15, 2009
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EVERYBODY GETS A KINECT!!
oh wait, isn't her entire audience middle aged women?
i'll be checking on ebay in a week to see if i can get one of theirs for cheap.
 

subject_87

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Jul 2, 2010
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Say what you will, this seems like a positive step for making gaming more socially acceptable.
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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Well that would be pretty awesome!
I'm looking into getting one anyways, so a free-ride would be sweet.

Plus: What a brilliant marketing move by Xbox.
Moms watch Oprah and Christmas is coming.
Brilliant.
 

Raziel_Likes_Souls

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Mar 6, 2008
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Tim Latshaw said:
"Oprah's show yesterday had a Kinect segment in which she recorded herself dancing for Jon Stewart."
Poor, poor Jon Stewart.
It's not like Sarah Silverman's any better.

The_root_of_all_evil said:
Greg Tito said:
(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.)
At least it wasn't over 9k then, she seems to have come unstuck with that particular number.

uppitycracker said:
you could probably tell them they all have their very own box of anthrax under their seats, and they'd go nuts, simply because they're on the damn oprah show.
This guy pretty much called it. I have a feeling they were only excited by the Oprah thing and not the free fucking DVD player with the fancy ass dancing thingy.
 

rileyrulesu

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Jun 15, 2009
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Baby Tea said:
Plus: What a brilliant marketing move by Xbox.
Moms watch Oprah and Christmas is coming.
Brilliant.
oh god, my mom watches Oprah, she might get me one for christmas! NOOOOOOOOOO!
 

Novania

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Feb 5, 2009
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Baby Tea said:
Well that would be pretty awesome!
I'm looking into getting one anyways, so a free-ride would be sweet.

Plus: What a brilliant marketing move by Xbox.
Moms watch Oprah and Christmas is coming.
Brilliant.
Yeah that was pretty well planned
 

Formica Archonis

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Nov 13, 2009
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Greg Tito said:
On yesterday's Oprah Winfrey Show, she gave away an Xbox 360 with Kinect to all the lucky ladies in her studio audience.
And I didn't have to read any further to know that Microsoft was the puppeteer on this one. Oprah Fear-for-Your-Kids-Moral-Panic-du-Jour Winfrey wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole.

Greg Tito said:
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.
Need they have bothered taint the audience with the younger set? This is the only segment of the population that seemed to approve of Tom Cruise's sofa act, rather than reacting with mocking laughter or by backing away from the crazy. I'm not sure they wouldn't've gone berserk for a box of week old leftovers.
 

Giest4life

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Feb 13, 2010
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rileyrulesu said:
Baby Tea said:
Plus: What a brilliant marketing move by Xbox.
Moms watch Oprah and Christmas is coming.
Brilliant.
oh god, my mom watches Oprah, she might get me one for christmas! NOOOOOOOOOO!
Can your mum adopt me? I can even fill out the papers for her....
 

Dorkmaster Flek

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Mar 13, 2008
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Admittedly, it doesn't take much to get an Oprah audience excited, but I'm with Tycho on this one.

"Kinect will succeed to the precise extent that gamers hate it."

We'll be quoting this man a year from now; mark my words. :)
 

Exterminas

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Sep 22, 2009
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Okay. It's official.

I have lost it.

I no longer have any mental connection to anything that is going on in this world.
Why would anyone...? Geez, I just don't get it anymore. May be I am too old.
 

Spencer Petersen

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Apr 3, 2010
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I suspect this will account for 60% of total Kinect's sold

/kid
But really this is Microsoft trying to market their motion control peripheral exactly like Nintendo did for the Wii, completely bypass the hardcore market and instead seal it as a "family event machine" for all the families of America, but hey, you can't fault them for trying whats been proven to work.