The Kinect system for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console seems to be an experiment more than anything.  Although the Kinect allows gamers to control their video characters with gestures and voice commands, the simple truth is that motion-based gaming is really only suitable for a very few types of games.  The Kinect must be meant for something more than just playing games.  Microsoft’s brand new offering, Kinect Fun Labs, may provide some clues as to where the technology is heading.

Kinect Fun Labs appears on the surface to be a series of minigames using the Kinect’s arcane powers.  In one, Kinect Me, the system scans the player to produce a frighteningly accurate avatar that matches the user’s own face and body.  Another, Kinect Sparkler, allows the player to capture a photograph of themselves and the room around them.  Once the photo is taken, the player can draw on and around themselves with a burning sparkler effect.  The Kinect can adjust the photographic background in 3D, moving it around you as you paint with the sparkler.  The final minigame, Googly Eyes, lets the player scan in some random object, say, a passing cat, for the Kinect to transform into a 3D avatar that can jump around the screen and do other tricks.

While these minigames are amusing, they point to something bigger.  For one, they’re a showcase for the Kinect’s technology, and the ways it can be put to use.  That’s not all, though.  The Kinect isn’t just a gaming accessory, but the core of Microsoft’s emerging home media strategy.  Many people are already using the Xbox as a media center, streaming in music, Netflix, and other entertainments.  Microsoft recently announced that Bing, YouTube, and even live TV will be coming to the Xbox, as well, cementing the console’s place as the heart of a home media system.  With this in mind, what do the games from Kinect Fun Labs mean in terms of interactive media?

Think about Kinect Me, for instance.  An accurate full-body avatar can do more than just wander across the screen.  It can model clothing, chosen from an online store.  Not clothing for the avatar, but for the player.  It can lounge across furniture, again, displayed in the virtual catalog of an online store.  The avatar could even drive around a virtual car, linked to the very real model on a dealer’s lot.  Xbox LIVE Marketplace could sell more than just software in the near future.

Kinect Sparkler is built around feeding the Kinect a 3D picture of yourself and your room, and then drawing on that image with a virtual effect.  But, what if the effect wasn’t some cute little sparkle, but an item in a virtual catalog?  The player could take an item out of the catalog, say a lamp or art piece, and set it directly in the picture of their own room through the magic of Kinect.

As for Googly Eyes, if the Kinect can scan in an object, it can very likely use that object as a search.  The player scans in that poor cat, and then Xbox LIVE Marketplace opens up with a range of cat-based products, from stuffed plush felines, to pet food, to the latest Garfield movie.

While this is all speculation at this point, it does illustrate the power of the Kinect system, and the opportunities it opens up for Microsoft.  They’re transforming the Xbox from a game console to a media center that plays movies, television, music, DVDs, Bing, and oh yes, games too.  With that sort of plan in mind, Microsoft isn’t aiming the Xbox at gamers anymore.  They’ve set their sights on everyone, and Kinect is the gun.  Kinect Fun Labs might be an experiment, or it might be the crosshairs lining up on a whole new demographic of Xbox customers.  Only time will tell.

Kinect Fun Labs is available now from Xbox LIVE.

[Edtiorial note: Contributed by Nelson Williams of VoxExMachina.com.]