As if Call of Duty: Black Ops launching when the clocks turned midnight wasn’t big enough for games retailers,  many of them will be opening their doors all over again tonight. Why? Microsoft’s hands free motion controller  for the Xbox 360 is released in the UK, and the list of midnight openings suggests it’s in very high demand.

The high demand for Kinect for the Xbox 360 may certainly have been helped by the massive marketing budget Microsoft have for the device. The company have reportedly got $500 million – yes that’s half a billion – to push Kinect into the minds of consumers on TV, online, in magazines and even on food packaging.

The launch line up suggests that Microsoft is aiming Kinect at the more casual audience, with titles including a number of fitness, dancing and family games. However, Microsoft insists that Kinect will become as “core” to the Xbox 360 as Xbox Live.

Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President in Charge of Microsoft Game Studios, Phil Spencer, told GameSpot:

“Well we view Kinect as a fundamental part of the [Xbox 360] platform”

“It is as core to the platform as [Xbox] Live is. And we think about the all products in our pipeline, including things that haven’t been announced. And just like there’s an [Internet] pipe connected to the dev kits, there’s a camera connected to the dev kits. So you think about those dev kits and those teams and that creative space, and how they want to add [Kinect] to that experience.”

“I think over time for first party, you’re not going to see that differentiation between “Is that a Kinect game?” and “Is that not a Kinect game?” You’re just going to think about these things as 360 games. Now that doesn’t mean there’s no controller included. This is just like Live, since Live is used in many different ways across many different experiences that we build.”

“I think our [Kinect] launch line up is strong. It’s deep. I think it’s great seeing the third parties step up. But our gamer customers should expect to see Kinect across all genres. All genres will support Kinect at some point.”

That’s likely to be of some comfort for any hardcore gamers who have pre-ordered Kinect, but it remains to be seen if the hands free controller will be able to compete with the PlayStation Move which does have hardcore titles – including Killzone 3 – in the works.

However, with reviews suggesting that Kinect is a revolutionary way of controlling games, we may just see Microsoft and Xbox 360 elbow their way into the ‘casual’ market.

Kinect for the Xbox 360 and will be available as part of a 250GB Xbox 360 bundle for £299.99. You can alternatively buy a Kinect on its own for £130.

So Train2Game, are you attending a Kinect midnight launch tonight? Do you have the motion controller on pre-order? Perhaps you’re waiting to see what games come out? Or maybe you’re not interested at all?

Whatever your views on Kinect are you can let us know about them here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.