Life would be so much easier around my house if everyone (or anyone) listened to me. Why, why won’t they listen to me?
It’s my fault, but I’m still steamed, that the husband bought a Kinect Xbox controller for our family. And those were his words, “for our family.” Because our children and I could not live one more day without a Kinect.
Admittedly, it’s freaking awesome. Kinect is a game remote where you are the controller. The device scans you and then you control the game with the movements of your body.
My husband and 5-and 6-year-old boys were able to play with the Kinect before it was released on Nov. 4 at two events that I took them to recently (and another one when it was still called Project Natal). One party was hosted by Xbox in a fabulous private home in Beverly Hills. The other was at the Electronic Arts’s Annual Winter Wonderland party. So not only did we get to play the game before anyone else, but we got to do it in a fabulous setting with programmers on hand to show us how it worked.
We all played the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows game for Xbox and Kinect at EA and it was very cool. I was Hermione, of course, and I let my geekiest of geeks come out when we were fighting deatheaters. We all had a very good time playing Kinect, but I don’t necessarily want to have one in my house where my boys are already video game obsessed.
The problem isn’t with Kinect, it’s with having video games in our house. I have to drag my 6-year-old out of bed every Monday through Friday morning. But come Saturday and Sunday, the days they can play Wii and Xbox, both boys are up bright and early. Up until recently my 5-year-old greeted each morning with “Is today the day we play Wii?”
I didn’t tell my husband to absolutely not buy a Kinect because I’m a buzz kill (although he might argue otherwise). But it’s too close to the holidays to go buying a big ticket item no matter who it’s for. And it’s too much. Too cool, too futuristic, too awesome for 5 and 6-year-old boys.
But, as my husband pointed out, it’s not too awesome for a hard working 42-year-old.
