These are cool devices and all...but at that price? Why would anyone not get a Wii instead? Or a 3DS...

On the other hand...at $70 for the whole deal would be much more reasonable for Move and Kinect. It would also show that they are serious about selling many of these things.

I actually think $70 is too low and would devalue the product in consumers eyes. $99 with Kinect Adventures is the sweet spot, in my opinion.

Kinect has been in the top half of the Amazon top 100 since its went on sale.

While a lower price point would probably improve its sales, it appears to be doing okay at $150.

@ Doug

Kinect is open for preorder on Amazon for exact 4 weeks now. And it went straight from the number 1 spot to place 47, where it is today. I think this is the exact opposite from doing okay. The Slim 360 is still at place 5.

@Christian - You're extrapolating a lot. Kinect might have fallen because people are waiting for more pricing details (since MS has been intentionally vague) and for more details about its capabilities and games to leak or become known. Also, the Kinect hardly fell like a stone, and settling at 47 is not terrible. The Move never reached the top 20, based on my experience checking on it.

Alas, for the Kinect to succeed it needs to hit millions of households immediately. I don't think it will at $150.

@ Jonathan
The pricing was clear from day one. Amazon offered the thing for $150 and it was pretty clear, if the price will be lower, then you don't have to pay the higher price. You say Kinect hardly fell like a stone, but what else is descending 47 places in 28 days other then that?
The fact that Playstation Move seems to generate lesser interest is nothing, that helps Kinect a lot. In the end, we agree, I don't think, Kinect will have a big impact in this holiday season and apart from MS I don't see anybody supporting it after 2011. That was, what I meant, when I said it isn't doing okay, for doing okay, it had to sell in millions, something you and I seem to doubt.

The Kinect is dead. It was dead before Microsoft even officially launched it. The reason? Microsoft has absolutely no triple-A first party developer to make content for it. The main story about the Kinect will be that by 1000 to 1 most existing 360 owners will just buy a Wii instead of wasting time with the Kinect.

As for being received well, its very arguable that the kinect was better received than the playstation move. Both were lackluster.

As for people demanding it be cheaper, the wii is pretty expensive too if you think about it. Its innards are a slightly overclocked gamecube with some extra flash. At the time of the Wiis release, the gamecube was retailing for 99 dollars, so the wii mote, nunchuck, sensor bar, and wii play cost about 150 dollars if you do the math.

The other systems were just so expensive at the time that it looked like a good deal.

@ Christian: "You say Kinect hardly fell like a stone, but what else is descending 47 places in 28 days other then that?"

The Sony Move went from #36 to #224 in the same time span. ;)

Not that I think this means the Move is going to fail, or that the Kinect will do better in the long run.

My original point is that the $150 price tag doesn't appear to be too high for many people. Which, to get back On Topic, might be why WalMart is testing the $200 price point.

The Amazon ranking is deceptive in the extreme. There's going to be immediate interest from hardcore fans who will buy anything new. It does not (nor cannot) predict how well the device will fair with the casual market. And given the price point, I think it's unlikely the casual market will be interested. And yes, even at $100 I think it's unlikely to break into the casual marketplace given that there's a $200+ system required for it.

Bethesda please just bring me Elder Scrolls 5 on my PS3 with Move support. That is all I ask of you right now. Thank you very much. :D

At the end of the day, I don' think either Sony or MS will be able to get into Nintendo's game without Nintendo's software.

If it was $99 with good software to push it then it would at least have a WiiFit chance to sell. Right now I think it is doa.

I truly wonder about the benefits that competition are supposed to bring. Fundamentally we believe in the free market while regulating against monopolies because the competition to survive in the marketplace is supposed to drive efficiency, diversity and innovation, all of which should be beneficial to everyone. Somehow, this market has seemed to operate totally oblivious of this paradigm. A single company, small in employee terms, drives almost all significant product innovation, and as it happens, profitability, whilst a cornucopia of other companies of every imaginable size and creed replicate and itterate. Sure there's other market innovation; a new take on FPS here; a new physics platform there. There's even the odd industry shaping stuff; Blizzard revolutionised the MMORPG; Zynga took the social network space etc., but I'm talking about a consistent ability to drive HUGE genre creation, or even device type creation on a regular basis, and only one company in the game space seems to do that.

Why?

I'm not sure. Perhaps it's because they operate in a bubble, ignorant to the market standards but listening to the values inside them and to the people around them (http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/kidnap1.jpg). I suppose that fruit company is the same, and perhaps that's why everyone's so serious about what their influence means. But why this seems so located to the videogames sector is beyond me. What I do know is that with them on such a high form (and less susceptible than ever to timely predation), their would-be rivals will have to invest better in joined-up-thinking innovation if they ever want to turn things on their head again.

And no, R&D spend /= innovation investment.

@ Doug
"My original point is that the $150 price tag doesn't appear to be too high for many people. Which, to get back On Topic, might be why WalMart is testing the $200 price point. "

But the Walmart offer is Kinect + 1 game + a $30 gift card. Because Kinect seems to be released without a game and the prices for Kinect titles seem to be $60, it is a bargain. I think nobody will buy Kinect without a game, so the price would otherwise be $210 (without any giftcard).

Doesnt bode well for the UK. They just change the currency symbol over here and £199 is a hell of a lot of money. They'll have to think about that carefully. Game store sales are down 16% in H1 we're facing a real recession tailwind still.

@ Merc

Where was the innovation in the SNES, N64, and Gamecube?

The NES, of course, was pretty fabulous at the time and the Wii is clearly innovative and new... but those three middle generations were just part the arms race, nothing new, nothing special. That's why Sony dominated when they came out with a console that included a DVD player and subsequently superior software. That's why MS found a way into the console space with the Live service and changed console gaming forever.

I commend Nintendo for their storied history, profitable business model, and definitely for their "outside the box" thinking this gen (and of course for finding ways to keep selling Mario games for 20+ years). The Wii hardware and software doesn't much appeal to me personally but I'm not surprised a ton of people like it. I'm glad they're doing well, because as you said, there was no groundbreaking innovation from the either Sony or MS this gen. We needed someone to shake up the game and bring some new ideas and Nintendo stepped up this time around.

Honestly I think the market is working exactly as it should. Copycat motion controls don't mean the market didn't work, it means that it worked perfectly. Nintendo needed something to differentiate from MS and Sony to get back in the game and look what we got! Now the other guys are scrambling to catch up to Nintendo. Will the next big change come from Nintendo or someone else? Right now I'd bet on Nintendo just because of how creative they were with the Wii, and now the 3DS. They've hit two in a row, but let's not forget how Sony and MS got into the game in the first place. They brought something new and exciting that pushed the industry forward. I wouldn't count them out just yet.

@Thomas Lo
"As for people demanding it be cheaper, the wii is pretty expensive too"

I agree & looked at it just that way when the wii launched.

I saw so many kids with thier parents in stores that christmas that got the "its a wii or no game system for christmas" treatment by thier parent(s) so the kid went for a wii rather than nada.
The kids wanted 360s & PS3s but the parent(s) wanted to spend a wii budget.

@gus one
"Game store sales are down 16% in H1 we're facing a real recession tailwind still"
But aren't there many who think the economy isnt affecting the industry "that much"?
"we're facing a real recession tailwind still" Millions of Americans feel it blowing as well.
The wind is swift for many.

The $212(200+us sales tax) deal isn't going to go over that great after a couple of weeks.IMHO
Even with the $30 card $182 for kinect & some launch title of which none will atract real gamers. (the most likely early adopters)
I thought they said kinect was mostly software based so why is it so pricey?
At the current prices i see only failure for kinect & move.
Which to me is sad as i'd like to see motion controls as an option for many non nintendo (or wii) top end franchies.
I'd say to realy get the penetration to the system owners, they need a $100-150 price that includes a game & it'd be smart to include a interactive demo disc of comming titles as well to create more intrest.
Ad one or two playable level(s) of a Halo title to the demo & it could sell the kinect to established gamers.

Both systems have a strong user base to sell to as well as alot of potential new system sales to gain but not if the prices aren't cheap enough or close to free with a new system.

@ Mark

Did I say Nintendo? (jk - of course I meant them, but the idea that people should jump to them from my description shows that these concepts are now imbued in all our minds).

Anyway, I think you've misjudged their history a little. I'll concede that they didn't innovate much with the SNES or Gamecube, and they paid for those with market share losses. But the N64 was in many ways a revelation, whose concepts (the way to properly do 3d, the way to properly do control in 3d etc.) were both highly profitable and lead the way for all the imitators trying to figure the future out. Sure they lost that gen, but that was as largely due to their own tactical misjusdgments as Sony's ability to tap new markets, with their own genuine innovation in the concept of who might buy into videogames (I'm not being facetious - understanding and believing that games were more than a kids toy took a real leap of faith).

Let's call that whole era middle Nintendo, and they sure suffered for it (in sales). Nintendo has turned full circle back to old Nintendo - (Game+Watch, NES, Gameboy) and at least appears to be 3 for 3 the way things are going - Wii, 3DS, and that other one. What was it? Oh yeah, Nintendo DS - soon to be the most successful gaming platform in the history of videogames.

But that's not really the point I'm making. That's merely the hardware side. The other half of the business miracle has been on their software side: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Nintendogs, NSMB, Animal Crossing, Brain Training etc. They may not each be the progenitor in their field, but the clarity and focus of vision, and seeing and betting on a market conventional wisdom said didn't exist is tantamount to business genius. They have an incredibly low miss rate (Wii Music approached 3 million for Pete's sake), and each of these products have spawned entire industries in their own right, but it's the sheer pace and consistency that's astonishing. THAT is what their competition is lacking in, and THAT is what I'm saying is skew in this industry - that nobody else has this ability, and that nobody else is properly trying to cultivate this ability.

@ Glenn Sturgeon and everyone

I suspect that Kinect is apparently so pricy because the technology really is that complex: Consider:

From what I understand this is the first consumer grade time of flight camera in the world - the sensor is not an ordinary CMOS/CCD detector and requires ultra fast ultra precise circuit functions to operate - it may very well require unusual doping or expensive filters to accurately sense the incredibly faint reflected infra-red pulse and as such costs more than regular chips. On top of that, rapidly generating and recharging IR pulses bright enough to illuminate a room with a timing precision down to 100 picoseconds or less is no mean feat: Ever wonder why Kinect is so large? I'm betting a combination of high-end high capacity transistors, capacitors, transformers, cooling and shielding. Add to that a microhpone array, actuators, cabling, whatever processors and super buffers are still there, casing, packaging, licensing, distribution, oh, and a regular RGB cam, and it's not hard to see where the costs come from.

Compound this with some of the most complex and expensive API development in history (I read they had a team of modelers rigging bones onto millions of 3D captures by hand, to be fed into a neural-net program running on a bespoke supercomputer, on top of advanced computer vision analysis preprocessing development) and a desperate wish to stop EDD projects leading more losses and I can see why it may be priced like this

@Merc

Than the Kinect has been a colossal failure for Microsoft. To invest that much money in developing the device, to spend that much money in manufacturing it, only to either: A) Sell it for $150 to avoid selling at a loss, coupled with absolutely zero innovative titles to appeal to early adopters or; B) Sell it for $100 or less to get some market penetration and induce casuals to buy it, but causing a potential operating loss in the devices devision, which is probably not a good idea for MS right now.

@Merc
Thanks for your insite.)

Like I've said before i realy would like to see kinect & move catch on.
But my faith is weak at the moment due to the current pricing along with the poor economy.
$60 for the types of games they are releasing at launch seems a bit ambitious as well.
Hopefully they will be able to drop prices fairly soon and not by force due to poor sales.

I'll remention a couple of Halo levels on a demo could move some hardware, its similar to the affect move support in the KZ series could do for move on a demo disc. (if they do it right)
If they just give out a good sample taste then gamers will eat it up.
Then maybe by word of mouth they'd get more general intrest from casual players.

As you can tell i think the core gamer audiance is more important at this point.
IMO casual players won't want or be willing to spend much more than a wii costs for what should prove to be a better system set up.

"Sony will also offer motion control bundle packages that will offer a better value"
I'd hope a $100. with the wand, navigation controller, ps eye & at least a demo disc if not a game.
I'm thinking likely 129.99 with a game.

A $150. start for either or both without a game would mean a realy slow start after the first 2 weeks, well at least thats what i'd expect.

We shall see & best to both MS & Sony !!

Hey Merc, I think we're actually on the same page here, we're just talking about slightly different things. My point was that market is working the way it should on the hardware side. Nintendo was the market leader, had some stale years, other companies stepped into the void and pushed the industry forward with some innovation of their own (Sony, MS, etc), and now Nintendo has come back around with some creative products and taken back the top spot. Just because Nintendo is the market leader doesn't mean the market isn't working. The competition is pushing everyone against each other and really, we all benefit as gamers ourselves. We now have great games both in the AAA and indie space readily available on consoles, viable new controls schemes, some impressive tech in the boxes, and ever-growing connectivity. Market dynamics at their best!

"Where was the innovation in the SNES, N64, and Gamecube?"

You're kidding, right? It would take a museum to answer your question.

Okie doke, just start with the atrium. Go one room at a time. Give me the most important contribution those hardware platforms made above and beyond their competition.

I'm fine with being wrong or learning something new. It's just my experience that those consoles weren't the impetus of major hardware innovation during their time.

I never had an Super NES, when it was new, bought a used one in 2000, never had a N64 either, when it was new, so I don't know so much about these consoles, but from what I have seen, they had some innovations, that had long term impact on the games industry.

Super NES:
- Introduction of shoulder buttons on Gamepads, those buttons were invented to support the movement in the mode 7 pseudo 3D graphics and were influential for all later gamepads (ok, not all, the Jaguar lacked shoulder buttons ;-) )
- Introduction of custom chips in game cartridges to improve hardware capabilities of the System, it were those chips, that allowed the Super NES to get Doom in a surprisingly good version.

N64:
- Introduction of an analogue controller for 3D action games (there were predecessors like the Atari 5200 and the Vectrex controllers, but they weren't designed for 3D movements like the N64 Pad and all other analogue Joysticks on the market were made for simulations)

I wouldn't consider the Gamecube as technically revolutionary as the Super NES or the N64, it was a well designed piece of hardware, with impressive power, compared to it's raw technical specs (something it has in common with the original XBox), but on the innovation front, it hadn't much features that were unseen before.