Maybe it's the large and lavish line-up of launch software. Maybe it's the contrast with the softly-softly approach Sony took for PlayStation Move. But the fact is, this doesn't feel like a mere peripheral. It feels more like a new hardware launch than anything we've seen in years.
Kinect isn't perfect by any means. It's expensive, finicky, unreliable and difficult to accommodate. But it's also an extraordinary piece of futuristic technology, and when is the last time the gaming world was treated to one of those?