The "it doesn’t have a price yet" excuse really depends on how the pre-orders are being managed. While I haven’t pre-ordered anything in a long time, at one point in time pre-orders required only a small portion of the purchase price (10% to 25%) as a down payment that would go towards the purchase of the product when it arrived; and usually people were allowed to refund their pre-order to some extent (typically if it was far enough ahead of the release that the order had not been actually placed). If people are unwilling to put $15 to $45 towards the purchase of Kinect today to ensure they get one at launch, what is the likelihood of them spending $100 to $150 for one after launch?
At the same time, if "Pre-Orders" are entirely "Pre-Sold" systems I could understand why someone would be reluctant to buy one regardless of whether they know the price or not. In the past retailers have over-promised their initial shipment by as much as 10 times what they received, and I wouldn’t want to pay full price ahead of time unless I was confident that I would receive the system when it shipped.
