Microsoft have just officially confirmed the pricepoint for Kinect during a pre-announcement news briefing. Their new motion sensing camera will sell for $149.99, which equates to £129.99 and €149.99. Kinect Adventures will come packaged with Kinect, with other games being given a recommended retail price of $49.99 (£39.99). This official price point was previously rumoured and then appeared on Microsoft's own website who officially commented "All prices now *no matter what the retail source* are placeholders".



Kinect will be bundled with the $199 redesigned Xbox 360, which has no hard drive, but includes 4GB of internal flash memory. This bundle will cost $299 (£249.99/€299.99).

These announcements have done nothing to increase my interest in Kinect, and in fact it's probably lowered it. They are charging $150 for an addon, which from what I can see, adds nothing to gaming but rather restricts your control. I see it only as a step backwards.

Rare have themselves recently commented on troubles they had with the soccer section in Kinect Sports. "The developers found that asking players to actively run around a field while also managing and tracking the movement of their teammates and opponents quickly became to unwieldy, no matter how they tweaked the controls." They opted for a system where the movement of your player is automatically controlled. That is where a thing called an analogue stick works quite well. Since the first announcements, I've been skeptical of how movement would work in games, and it seems those concerns were valid. Having to sacrafice fundamental control in games is just something that I'm not intereted in.

What do you think of the price? Will you be getting Kinect? Head over to our forums and give us your opinions.