Microsoft's Kinect Will Debut Nov. 4 for $150

Microsoft's Kinect will debut on Nov. 4 for a retail price of $149.99, marking the company's next big bet in the console-game space. Specifically, the bet is that the same millions of people who gravitated toward the Nintendo Wii (where you gripped two controllers and waved them around like a severely over-caffeinated maniac trying to hail a cab) will think that having no controller at all--where you operate your onscreen avatar via body motion, thanks to the Kinect's 3D camera--is the new greatest thing.The new Xbox 360 4GB with Kinect can be had on that same date for $299.99.Kinect won't play a part in Microsoft's July 22 earnings report, but given how gaming has become an increasingly vital part of the company's overall bottom line, you can bet its sales numbers will be watched closely toward the end of the year. Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division contributed around 11 percent of the company's overall $14.5 billion revenue in the first quarter of 2010, slightly up from the year-ago quarter.The Xbox 360 4GB/Kinect bundle is priced correctly, I feel, but the standalone Kinect unit at $150 is priced way too high; the market for the device is casual gamers, who'll blanch at that price-tag. If Microsoft wants to make the Kinect a hit, they may want to revert to the model that's served the video game industry well for years: slash the price of the Kinect, eat a steeper bottom-line loss on hardware, and then make up the balance with game sales.(Also, Microsoft needs to figure out what body motion best simulates "reverse;" my first time playing the Kinect, I took a spin on the racing game Joy Ride and promptly plowed my digital jalopy into an inconvenient wall. Many frantic body-twistings on my part later, the car had only managed to grind itself more deeply against the obstacle, and the Microsoft employee monitoring my progress--wincing in sympathetic embarrassment--was forced to reset the Xbox. Leaning back just slows your vehicle down; when you're stuck facing forward, you're really stuck. Just saying.)



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