Seece said:
If you actually thought about it for a second you would probably guess correctly. Microsoft don't need mass adoption of the wirless or HD. So they can charge through the nose. that 120 hard drive is almost as expensive as an Xbox 360 Arcade, so can't you see when Microsoft WANTS something to sell, they'l get the price as low as possible. |
And this is exactly why it seems pretty reasonable that MS would want to sell Natal for the price of a controller, even it means taking a loss on each peripheral sold. I think everyone who insists it will cost $100, much less $200 (claims made after last year's E3) is simply trying to drum up reasons why nobody will buy Natal.
One would hope MS is going to try and sell Natal games rather than Natal cameras to Xbox owners who will stop using them if no interesting Natal software is continually released.
In the case of Natal, they're not trying to sell cameras to previous Xbox owners so much as they're trying to broaden the Xbox market and sell more consoles, even if it means giving the camera away with consoles.
The decision to remove the independent processor from the camera as a cost cutting measure should have been a big clue.
As for the HDD pricing, that is something MS might want to re-evaluate if they really want to push DD and DL content as a major part of the Xbox experience, even if it means nothing more than giving the consumer "more" at the same retail price (ie. 250 GB HDD for the previous price of a 120 GB HDD, which would be discontinued). It's not unreasonable seeing as how they already did this with the Elite last year (swapped the 60 GB HDD with a 120 GB HDD, dropped the HDMI cable, kept the case black and called it a $100 discounted Elite).
