Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect

Silent to sound, black-and-white to color, SD to HD, and, currently, 2D to 3D. What’s the next big transition that will define the future of creative media professionals? The Xbox Kinect is pointing the way.

The heavily marketed motion-sensing appliance for the Xbox 360 was recently ensconced in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-selling consumer electronics product in history, moving eight million units in its first 60 days on sales in late 2010. That beats out sales rates for both the iPhone and iPad. At $150, it’s a seriously attractive piece of living-room gear.

The Kinect has the ability not just to track motion in a room, but to recognize voices and read facial expressions. As Tomer Tishgarten, an exec at ad agency Engauge, sees it, that makes it the next step past touch-screen technology — and a harbinger of big things to come in the consumer media space:

For catalog clothing brands, the ecommerce implications are immense. Why couldn’t Eddie Bauer let consumers try on clothes virtually? In the travel industry, the applications are even more numerous — a walking tour of the cabanas at Club Med, anyone? And with the capacity to scan an entire room, why couldn’t The Home Depot let customers design the layout of new kitchen cabinets or Ikea showcase sofas within digital models of consumers’ living rooms?

We’ve heard about this kind of stuff before, but with campaigns underway to liberate consumers from the tyranny of mouse-and-keyboard or control-pad dynamics for interacting with technology, the revolutionary aspect of it is becoming more real. Today, the Kinect is chiefly an accessory for gaming. But tomorrow, this kind of technology will change the way we think about not just interactive entertainment but media in general.