Procrastinato said:
I gave two examples, only one of which had the cost at $200. I gave what I felt what was a "low end" and a "high end" cost, to illustrate that losses per unit, if you sell a bunch, are bad, bad news, at almost any level. At even $10 lost per unit, and if MS is only going for ~25% adoption (which is about 10m by the time Natal launches), that's still a $100M loss. I'm trying to dispel the silly idea that Natal will be sold at a loss, in order to make it a major factor in the 360 envrionment. It can't be, really, unless the proceeds from the software are going to be *really* lucrative. With a devoted processor fast enough to process a high-rez stereo image and a depth image at 60 Hz, a depth camera (which are freaking expensive, today), memory, etc., Natal is going to be expensive. There's no getting around it. A 3 GHz Pentium IV can process a single 8-bit 640x480 image for edge data at about 180 Hz, in a certain academic app I won't name. Even if we say the Natal is based only upon standard edge detection algorithms, and doesn't do anything "special" (like face detection, which is outrageously expensive, or recognition of more than about two hands at once), that's basically a full 3 GHz CPU, plus a good 8 megs of fast, fast memory. Sure they could create custom, specialized (read: more expensive) processing components to do this... but then they aren't going to be mass-produced and they just aren't going to be cheap, especially when combined with the camera costs. $50 won't cut it -- especially not with the US economy as it is, and will be in 2010. It'll cost at least $80, if not $100 or more, and it won't be sold for a loss. No matter how cool Natal actually turns out to be... it won't be cheap. |
It will process at 30Hz I believe has been said. As for hardware, there are already chips that specialize in performing the convolutions used for edge detection. This is obviously going to be faster than doing it with a standard CPU, even when using the best algorithms. I think they are going to have some for of these specialized hardware, and I think it will not be as expensive to produce these chips as you think. Also, it processes 640x480 in depth, not sure I would consider that high-rez. Doesn't need to be really.
Oh and the Z-Cam guys were talking about going to market with their camera for $50 - $75 before being purchased by MS.
