Kinect actually costs $150 to make

From Develop:

A highly-positioned, trusted source had given Develop the “$150 manufacturing costâ€￾ figure on the condition of anonymity, adding that the expenses of Kinect is a topic of concern for his company.
The news comes in the wake of rumours suggesting an internal struggle at Microsoft on the retail price of Kinect, a kit once touted to sell at £50, but now thought will cost over twice the price.
“Presumably, a big portion of Microsoft’s target market for Kinect won’t have a console already, so adding in the console costs along with the camera costs, the result is starting to look a bit pricey.â€￾
“The commercial guys at Microsoft will obviously want to sell the unit at its lowest price, but the accountants will be arguing that Microsoft has to start paying for all the R&D and goods that got it to this position.

IMO considering that the new X360 sells for roughly the same than the original did 5 years ago, and that upcoming bundles with kinect will go for as low as $299 it could be expected that MS will subsidize its casual market growth with regular X360 sales. But then on the other hand they have all those RROD costs from warranties and such, so its hard to say where the money goes.

 

Kinect >32x

 

Yeah, and by mid-1996 those where all in bins at walmart for like $25

I remember getting one just for the kicks

 

But the 32X was released for no reason at all. Kinect is a new approach to what the Wii has done and done poorly

 

New approach? It's an enhanced EyeToy, and I found EyeToy deadly boring. The Wii did well what it did, and what it did was creating silly cheapass sportsgames for the masses. Pretty much every Wii title that is really good could easily have worked without the wiimote control crap.

If the Wii did poorly, why is Kinect the new approach that will do better for sure? All I've seen so far are silly sports games, virtual animals and shit like that.

I don't to see myself in 10 years whispering commands to my virtual furry beast on a 3D screen.

 

Now what would be interesting (in a lame sort of way) is if they had a "horse whispering" game, where you communicate with your horse using subtle, nearly imperceptible body language cues. (and maybe a "Clever Hans" bonus game XD)

 

kinect=fail

 

If the wii did it so poorly why is it outselling both xbox 360 and ps3. The point of kinect is to cash in on wii's success imo.

 

You can do great things with the configuration of the wiimote (fps games work great, sports game work amazing, platform games can be enhances, 3d action games with pointer controls are awesome, etc).

The issue of Kinect is not one of applicability or technology, is of price and positioning in a market which has already enjoyed this sort of thing, without such an additional cost.

 

My graphics card cost $150, and now it's obsolete. DOUBLE SPOOKY.

 

$150 to make?
No way.
Made in china, labour costs are not even worth bothering about.
3 cameras, not sure if they're VGA or CMOS but they probably do upto 1024x768 resolution each, £8 each maximum, electronics would cost £10 tops, PSU would be £3. Packaging would probably be £7 per unit tops and shipping £7 per unit. + £3 profit for the factory.
8 + 8 + 8 + 10 + 3 + 7 + 7 + 3 = £54 to make and send maximum = $82.

 

i see Kinect as an eyetoy 2.0 tbh ;-)

 

I think my dislike of Nintendo is well documented here.... no need to explain

 

splith : Maybe you should take a look at what other time of flight cameras cost, you wouldn't get much change out of $500....

It's very brave of microsoft to ignore the fact that generally add ons either bomb or get a few years of life at most. It is was part of the Xbox 3 then it would have worked well.

 

You forgot about Scarlett Johanson, and what booby-physics could do!:033:

Didnt did I, but then again develop isnt know for making stuff up, and you cant use any POS components and expect it to work.

I should start charging all you posers for copyright infrigment...

I hated the Wii when you idiots were still making Nitro jokes, I'm teh original ha8er!

[/joke]

Indeed, but MS still has to recoup a lot of money, and early launching yet another console wont do any good.

 

Kinect will cost $150, games will be priced at $50

http://kotaku.com/5591138/microsoft-prices-kinect-xbox-360-motion-games

 

I knew kotaku was slow with news but 2 weeks? god damn!

 

not really. This is about MS finally making it official. Along with the unit coming bundled with a free game.

 

It's a no-news really, everyone knew it was going to be $150 and there were no rumors at a lower/higher price.

In any case the thread is about how much kinect costs to make