We knew it was bound to happen — someone would be the first to call "First!" for breaking their TV set while playing with Microsoft's new motion-controlled gaming device.
Looks like Phil Villarreal is that person. Way to go Phil.
Seems Phil manged to break his year-old television last night while playing "Kinect Sports Volleyball" with his newly aquired Kinect device.
In case you aren't up on all the latest motion-controlled gaming madness, Kinect is a gadget that you attach to an Xbox 360. It lets you play video games and control your movies and music with the movements of your body rather than a hand-held controller. (Check out our Kinect launch coverage here, here and here.)
Phil explains what happened on his blog:
A public service announcement: Do not under any circumstances play Kinect Sports Volleyball at 1:30 a.m. while standing under a ceiling fan with a dangling chain for a light switch. You could conceivably spike it into your year-old amazing TV, causing it to die with a rainbow LCD teardrop dripping down from the impact wound. Plus you'll lose the match by forfeit.
Seems Phil has summoned the ghost of Wii accidents past.
As you may remember, when the Wii first launched four years ago, players began breaking their televisions left and right. A person would be in the midst of playing "Wii Sports Bowling" and — wham — the motion-controller would slip out of their hand and land smack-dab in the middle of their television ... or perhaps puncture a hole in their living room lamp, go flying out their front window, or smack their girlfriend upside the head.
Since so many people were incapable of holding onto their Wii controllers, nowadays every time a Wii game starts up we all have to sit through a warning telling us to be sure to put the controller's wrist strap on.
One might have thought that, since you don't have to hold any controller whatsoever in your hand while using Kinect, these sorts of accidents could be avoided. But no. One should never underestimate humanity's ability to break things in stupid ways.
In fact, I suspect we'll soon start seeing plenty of reports about Kinect users smacking, kicking and otherwise injuring each other as they flail about their living rooms while playing games like "Kinect Sports" and "Kinect Adventures."
So listen up folks, let Phil's experience be a warning to you. Clear your play space and watch out for your fellow player. Motion-controlled gaming is not meant to be a full-contact sport.
Winda Benedetti writes the Citizen Gamer columnfor msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.
