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Kinect Costs $150 for Microsoft to Make

$150 in manufacturing costs? Doubtful.

$150 per unit including sunk costs (engineering, firmware development) based on anticpated sales? Perhaps.

Their cost still doesn't make it any more valuable to me. In some countries gigantic insects are delicacies. That doesn't mean I'm going pay top dollar to import a box of cockroaches.
 
Ms is gonna fail hard, all the people I know with 360's mainly play madden, live and cod. Ms just likes losing money don't they???
All the rrod consoles getting fixed for free, now this kinect shit!! I guess that's what happens when a software company tries to make a killing off hardware. Kinect is goin down the toilet before it comes out.

I don't know anyone who will pay $150-$200 for this shit, your better off buying the real thing and getting a wii. I'm sure nintendo must be proud of themselves for making the wii the way they did right now. Ms and Sony is on their jockstrap, lol..
 
There was a translation mistake.

Actually, it initially cost 150 yuan to make, with the expectation for that to drop dramatically over time.
 
Bman123 said:
Ms is gonna fail hard, all the people I know with 360's mainly play madden, live and cod. Ms just likes losing money don't they???
All the rrod consoles getting fixed for free, now this kinect shit!! I guess that's what happens when a software company tries to make a killing off hardware. Kinect is goin down the toilet before it comes out.

I don't know anyone who will pay $150-$200 for this shit, your better off buying the real thing and getting a wii. I'm sure nintendo must be proud of themselves for making the wii the way they did right now. Ms and Sony is on their jockstrap, lol..
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I am glad you're basing all 40+ MILLION Xbox360 owners on the 4 or 5 people you know.

The Kinect is something my fiance would love because she already has an Xbox360 and loves silly games like that and isn't as good at games like L4D. She doesn't enjoy playing games that are typically filled with "hardcore" gamers because they are either really good or take it way to seriously. Being able to play casual games with the ease of Xbox Live will make this sell. Let's face it, Nintendo has dropped the ball vastly on the online portion of their console.
 
smackababy said:
I am glad you're basing all 40+ MILLION Xbox360 owners on the 4 or 5 people you know.

The Kinect is something my fiance would love because she already has an Xbox360 and loves silly games like that and isn't as good at games like L4D. She doesn't enjoy playing games that are typically filled with "hardcore" gamers because they are either really good or take it way to seriously. Being able to play casual games with the ease of Xbox Live will make this sell. Let's face it, Nintendo has dropped the ball vastly on the online portion of their console.
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Agreed. There are different strokes for different folks. If you don't like the idea of Kinect, fine, but there are a lot of people that are going to be REALLY interested in this thing.
 
So this will be $150 plus $60 for a game, right? So that's $210 for something like the Wii. Guys, think of the dusty Wiis you haven't played in ages. Women may say they like it, but they said the same thing about the Wii. Look at how that's turned out.
 
Narmer said:
So this will be $150 plus $60 for a game, right? So that's $210 for something like the Wii. Guys, think of the dusty Wiis you haven't played in ages. Women may say they like it, but they said the same thing about the Wii. Look at how that's turned out.
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Best selling console of this generation? I'm sure MS thought about that before making Kinect.

I'm interested in this for the gesture/voice commands interface and some of the games look fun, could be interesting.
 
Glitchny said:
Best selling console of this generation? I'm sure MS thought about that before making Kinect.

I'm interested in this for the gesture/voice commands interface and some of the games look fun, could be interesting.
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My point is that it is great for Nintendo but a waste of money for gamers.
 
I think Microsoft is going to have an uphill battle on their hands with this. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but as I see it, Nintendo has gotten a huge chunk of the people who would potentially buy this to buy a Wii already, so those people aren't going to want to plunk down another $300+ for a 360 and a Kinect to get what they perceive as being the same thing as the Wii. Of course it's not, but professional wrestling isn't real either, but you have a substantial percentage of viewers that believe it's 100% as NFL football and Nascar. These people are going to see a $200 Wii (or less by then maybe, who knows) or a $300-$400 Xbox 360/Kinect setup, and they're going to get the Wii because it's the cheaper option.

Also, I see a lot of people in this thread who assume that the people this appeals to at large give 2 craps about online functionality. I think most of the demographic you'd like to think would be interested in this are never going to connect to XBL at all because, honestly why would they? You gonna co-op river raft online with your sister from Idaho?

I'm hopeful for Kinect and Move, I think they both bring some amazing innovation to the table, but I think when you look at the history of console makers trying to shoe horn hardware into existing technology, it rarely, very rarely, ever works out the way they'd like it to.

Even Nintendo has seen this with the Wii Motion Plus. Motion+ is a pretty amazing upgrade to the Wiimote, and gives an entirely new level of control, but the sales and attach rate on it have been pretty mediocre, and you don't see developers wanting to dedicate a lot of resources to making their games with the Motion+ in mind.

Time will tell, but I think if you see more than 10% of 360 owners adopting Kinect, that's be pretty shocking.
 
That's about as fair an assessment of the Kinect as I've seen.

Fact is, aftermarket peripherals almost always do terribly. Outside of niche peripherals for blockbusters such as plastic guitars, peripherals wallow in the paradox of insufficient market for developers to support, and lack of software to expand the market.
 
I should follow up my statement about Microsoft having an uphill battle by saying I think Sony's uphill battle will be just as tough. Although making a controller that's reminiscent of the wiimote might be on their side.

At this point, if you took a poll of 100 random households with Xbox 360s or PS3s, I'm willing to bet MAYBE 15 of them would have any clue what either of these things are. Most people don't sit around watching E3 or reading Kotaku, we tend to live in a vacuum as a group, but we all too often assume we're somehow the majority.
 
Krakn3Dfx said:
I should follow up my statement about Microsoft having an uphill battle by saying I think Sony's uphill battle will be just as tough. Although making a controller that's reminiscent of the wiimote might be on their side.

At this point, if you took a poll of 100 random households with Xbox 360s or PS3s, I'm willing to bet MAYBE 15 of them would have any clue what either of these things are. Most people don't sit around watching E3 or reading Kotaku, we tend to live in a vacuum as a group, but we all too often assume we're somehow the majority.
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With Sony's advertising campaign, people will find out. MS, I don't know.
 
Tristicus said:
With Sony's advertising campaign, people will find out. MS, I don't know.
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I think more than advertising, it's the slippery slope of offering a somewhat expensive peripheral on top of the core system years into the console's life cycle. On one end, you're going to have people who will put off buying one because of the price and chance that it won't be supported, and on the other end you have developers/publishers who won't require it or even utilize it because they're worried not enough users will have it, and requiring it will hurt sales. Anyone on the front line of this release who spends tens of millions developing some triple A hardcore title that requires Kinect is going to lose their ass on it, and they know that, which is why you haven't really seen anyone announce anything like that for it yet.

Again, if you look at the Wii, High Voltage is doing very little to utilize Motion Plus in Conduit 2, and they're definitely not requiring it at this point (and they should), and it's a $20 add on that has come bundled with some million plus selling games on the Wii like Wii Sports Resort and Tiger Wood '10.

If 3rd party developers are nervous about not having enough people buying a $20 attachment for a Wiimote, imagine how quickly they're going to balk at spending a lot of time on developing for a $150 one. You can be sure that companies like Harmonics who are making full games requiring Kinect are having some substantial money thrown at them from Microsoft. This is going to be the case for the life of these motion control products from Microsoft and Sony, either they produce enough 1st party games to encourage/require people to buy the hardware, and/or they pay off outside developers who normally wouldn't consider it from a financial standpoint.
 
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Krakn3Dfx said:
I think more than advertising, it's the slippery slope of offering a somewhat expensive peripheral on top of the core system years into the console's life cycle. On one end, you're going to have people who will put off buying one because of the price and chance that it won't be supported, and on the other end you have developers/publishers who won't require it or even utilize it because they're worried not enough users will have it, and requiring it will hurt sales. Anyone on the front line of this release who spends tens of millions developing some triple A hardcore title that requires Kinect is going to lose their ass on it, and they know that, which is why you haven't really seen anyone announce anything like that for it yet.

Again, if you look at the Wii, High Voltage is doing very little to utilize Motion Plus in Conduit 2, and they're definitely not requiring it at this point (and they should), and it's a $20 add on that has come bundled with some million plus selling games on the Wii like Wii Sports Resort and Tiger Wood '10.

If 3rd party developers are nervous about not having enough people buying a $20 attachment for a Wiimote, imagine how quickly they're going to balk at spending a lot of time on developing for a $150 one. You can be sure that companies like Harmonics who are making full games requiring Kinect are having some substantial money thrown at them from Microsoft. This is going to be the case for the life of these motion control products from Microsoft and Sony, either they produce enough 1st party games to encourage/require people to buy the hardware, and/or they pay off outside developers who normally wouldn't consider it from a financial standpoint.
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I agree with what you said, but I do feel one big plus for Sony is, the Move can be incorporated into standard games and doesn't need some type of exclusive that just for it. So putting in a little bit of extra work to incorporate move into a title instead of out right developing a title around it is in Sony's favor. I can see it getting a lot of support just being another input option for many games.

Can't say the same for Kinetc, at least at present. Maybe in the future when/if titles come out that will support Kinetc features (say turn your head and your character does but you use a controller to play the game still) we will see more support for it. But right now Kinetc imo isn't in a good spot at all.
 
KaOTiK said:
I agree with what you said, but I do feel one big plus for Sony is, the Move can be incorporated into standard games and doesn't need some type of exclusive that just for it. So putting in a little bit of extra work to incorporate move into a title instead of out right developing a title around it is in Sony's favor. I can see it getting a lot of support just being another input option for many games.

Can't say the same for Kinetc, at least at present. Maybe in the future when/if titles come out that will support Kinetc features (say turn your head and your character does but you use a controller to play the game still) we will see more support for it. But right now Kinetc imo isn't in a good spot at all.
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Are you saying that it's easier to incorporate the Move system for features on top of regular games? It seems to me that MS has the advantage there since you can still hold a standard controller and have the kinect camera observe you.

The sticking point is if Kinect always needs that 10-15 percent CPU overhead which kills the auxillery "tack-on" aspect, but really a tacked on feature is still a tacked on feature regardless of the platform so I'll hold judgement until I see offerings but I don't have too much hope.
 
ObscureCaucasian said:
Are you saying that it's easier to incorporate the Move system for features on top of regular games? It seems to me that MS has the advantage there since you can still hold a standard controller and have the kinect camera observe you.

The sticking point is if Kinect always needs that 10-15 percent CPU overhead which kills the auxillery "tack-on" aspect, but really a tacked on feature is still a tacked on feature regardless of the platform so I'll hold judgement until I see offerings but I don't have too much hope.
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Yes, I am saying it is easier to incorporate Move into a normal game, they have already showed a few games out already that will take advantage of it. You say MS has the advantage, but what does having the camera observing you accomplish?

I agree on the tack on thing as well. Hell, I really hope all this motion control crap just dies out tbh. Sure it is nice here and there, but I when I'm wanting to game and pretty much everyone else I know who feels like gaming, they want to do it relaxed, it laid back in a chair or on the couch. The motion crap is good for get togethers/party stuff but I rather just watch it die a horrible death at this point in time.
 
KaOTiK said:
I when I'm wanting to game and pretty much everyone else I know who feels like gaming, they want to do it relaxed, it laid back in a chair or on the couch. The motion crap is good for get togethers/party stuff but I rather just watch it die a horrible death at this point in time.
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Oh I agree, but I'll tell you we aren't the reason Microsoft and Sony developed motion controls... they're in pursuit of that elusive "casual gamer" market. The nice thing is if we don't like it we should be able to just ignore it for the most part.
 
ObscureCaucasian said:
Oh I agree, but I'll tell you we aren't the reason Microsoft and Sony developed motion controls... they're in pursuit of that elusive "casual gamer" market. The nice thing is if we don't like it we should be able to just ignore it for the most part.
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I still want it to die though so we don't have its taint to eventually spread further.
 
KaOTiK said:
I still want it to die though so we don't have its taint to eventually spread further.
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If casual gamers dump money into the industry, that money could come back to benefit hardcore gamers. "Casual Games" are cheaper to develop and if they attract a large audience then that's not a bad thing for the platforms.
 
ObscureCaucasian said:
If casual gamers dump money into the industry, that money could come back to benefit hardcore gamers. "Casual Games" are cheaper to develop and if they attract a large audience then that's not a bad thing for the platforms.
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Oh but it is bad. More "hardcore" series will become more and more casual friendly and less focus on the "hardcore" market as more money is in the casual side.

Publishers go where the money is, and if they can get the casual into the market that is where they are going to go.

To see an effect of this already in progress/has happened. Look at PC gaming as console gaming started becoming the larger market.
 
As of this posting, Kinect is #9 in the bestselling video games at Amazon while the Move bundle is #69.

Quite interesting. Thought nobody knew about them!
 
There will probably be a $300 bundle with a stripped down slim in time for Xmas. A lot of $ for something at the end of its life cycle and a bunch of competition.
 
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