I never thought I'd long for the quiet dignity of the U-Force

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360's motion control system, heretofore called Project Natal, will instead be released under the name "Kinect." At this point I'm starting to wonder if Federal Trade Commission regulations require all video game motion control devices to have really, really stupid names. There's clearly some malign force at work when changing the name of a product to something as cringe-inducing as "Kinect" is at least arguably an improvement.

First Nintendo replaced the perfectly serviceable name "Nintendo Revolution" with "Wii." Then Microsoft, witnessing the Wii's explosive success and apparently reaching the conclusion that pre-Wii motion controls systems had failed to catch on because their names weren't stupid enough, dubbed their own motion controls system "Project Natal," which makes it sound like either some sort of obstetric equipment or (if you pronounce it "Na-TAHL") some war-torn Third World capital city of the sort that Christiane Amanpour does solemn voiceovers from for CNN. Now Natal is replaced by Kinect, which sounds like the sort of name you'd give to a cheap knock-off of Legos or Tinkertoys. The name does have the advantage of sort of resembling the word "kinetic" and so has something approaching actual relevance to the product, though if Microsoft is trying to imitate Nintendo's success in appealing to a broader audience I'm not sure a name vaguely evoking a term most people probably haven't used since fifth grade science class is really the way to go.
Meanwhile, there's Sony's entry in the field, PlayStation Move, which is arguably the most generic name ever given to a consumer product. It makes the branding of the cheap store-brand soda that my mom used to buy, with the brown label that just said "Cola" on it, seem like a riot of creativity by comparison. It's like making a candy bar called Eat, or marketing a clothing line called Wear, or re-releasing Daikatana with the title Uninstall. On the plus side, Move isn't obnoxiously "clever" like Wii or Kinect, and sadly that's enough to make it my favorite of the the three. It's troubling to realize that the best-named motion controller ever made was probably the Sega Activator, AKA this monstrosity:




There's just no marketing like 90s Sega marketing.