While we received pricing info on Sony’s Playstation Move motion controller at E3, Microsoft remained tight-lipped about the launch price for the Kinect. Until now. Sort of.
Speculation has been all over the map trying to nail down a proper price point for Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller. For anyone that’s been sleeping under a rock these past few weeks, the Kinect will use your body itself as the input device, registering your movements via camera to interact with its games. While that’s an extremely dumbed down explanation, it gets across that the technology sounds pretty hardcore. That didn’t stop the general gaming populace from letting out a collective gasp at the initial price listings for the Kinect at Amazon, Wal-mart, and Best Buy hitting their online store at 150 bones. While this had the effect of immediately stirring up the rumor mill, without any official word from Microsoft themselves it was easy for dissenters to cite that without official comment from the big man himself, it could easily be a simple place-holder price until an official announcement was made.

Unfortunately, that becomes more difficult to swallow when the Microsoft store themselves posts the same price on their very own store — which, for those of you that are slow on the uptake, is exactly what happened. While there still has yet to be an official announcement made about the price of the Kinect, it would seem fairly silly for Microsoft to come out with the “rumors and speculation” liner when they themselves reflect that speculation in their own house. Unless there has been a colossal miscommunication both inside and outside of the big M, it can be declared that it is unofficially official that the Kinect will be available on November 4th for $150. Anyone wanting to wield their imaginary lightsaber later this year might want to start saving those pennies now.

-Andrew Glasco