Microsoft Officially Prices Kinect at $150, Comes with Kinect Adventures
Microsoft finally announces Kinect’s price, and it comes bundled with a game.
On July 20th, Microsoft officially announcedKinect’s price at $149.99. Kinect comes bundled with the game Kinect Adventures. The $150 price point for the peripheral has long been rumored.
First-party games for Kinect will be priced at $49.99.
“All of our Kinect retail games, from a first-party standpoint – Kinectimals, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride – will all be retailing for $49,” said Aaron Greenberg, Director of Product Management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.
According to Joystiq, Harmonix’s Dance Centralwill also release at $50.
Microsoft also announced the Kinect Holiday Bundle. It comes packaged with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, and the new 4GB system. The 4GB is flash memory based. The system has a black matte finish and includes built-in Wi-Fi.
The holiday bundle releases for $299.99. An official date hasn’t been set.
The stand-alone 4GB system launches Aug. 3 for $199.99.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Greenberg stated Kinect is the next big gaming experience:
With Kinect and what we’re doing there, a lot of people have talked about this being the type of leap you would typically see when you went to a new generation. But the nice thing is we’re able to bring that next generation experience to market this generation.
Kinect launches Nov. 4th in North America. 15 games will be available at release.
Discussion
It’s been over a month since E3. Instead of listening to virtually everybody who said $150 is too much for Kinect, what does Microsoft do? They price it at $150. It’s almost as much as a Wii, or their new 4GB model. While it does come with a game, it’s still a high entree fee.
People will still buy it though, like Michael Pachter said:
[Also] the standalone price for Kinect is too high, and core gamers will be put off by the price. My bias is that most core gamers will wait, but that 5 – 10 per cent will buy it. That suggests 2 – 4 million standalone units [sold].
The games just aren’t there yet. At least on the Wii, you can play full-blown games with the motion controls. As of right now, Kinect is lacking some serious meat. The games should launch at $30, or at the very max $40.
Speaking on the new 4GB system, Greenberg told Eurogamer:
It will effectively replace the Arcade console. We see it as a great value entry price point for consumers. We’re upgrading the storage to a full 4GB, which is quite a bit of storage. At $199 we think that’s a great price point. That 4GB is built-in flash memory, so it’s not a hard drive. There is a hard drive bay built into all the new Xbox 360s.
4GB is way too small. Hey Greenberg, it’s not “quite a bit” of storage. After one or two game installs, a demo, and a few XBLA downloads, it’ll be filled.
Microsoft could’ve put 20GB in there. There’s really no excuse for such a small amount of storage. Even as a stand-alone, the system doesn’t have a large appeal.
Yeah, it has the expansion bay, but you can only buy Microsoft’s insanely overpriced hard drives. If you buy the 4GB model, you’re quickly going to need to upgrade to a hard drive.
On the July 20th episode of Attack of the Show, Adam Sessler said the $150 price point for Kinect is too high. Kevin Pereira asked him something along the lines of, “Would you buy Kinect at $150?” Sessler responded yes, I have to for my job.
Pereira pressed him, asking if he didn’t have to get it for work would he still buy Kinect at that price. Sessler flat-out said no.
When you’re buying and playing games not for fun but for work, you know something’s wrong.
Photos by Major Nelson
Quarter Disorder 
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