| TheSource said: No, I don't think so. The Slim was only 40% of X360 sales in the USA in June if you go by NPD. Granted, that was in two weeks, but even so they can meet that demand especially since the Euro / Americas / Japan Slim launches were spaced out. They're only going to need 3-4m Kinects for 2010 at what they're pricing and bundling it for and odds are they're already manufacturing the things. You can roughly tell when the Slim demand is expected to run out by the introduction of the new Arcade models. They're coming in August - Aug 3 in the USA and Aug 20 in Europe. You can take that as roughly when the Slim boost will run out since it wasn't accompanied by a permanent price drop. So they'll ride those models for a bit, then Halo, then Kinect and Call of Duty, possibly with a price drop in there somewhere. |
I don't think the Kinects themselves are cheap or easy to manufacture. It has a 10bit camera sensor and they are typically only really used with robotics, so effectively 3-4M Kinects might represent a doubling or trippling of the typical production of that sensor class. I don't think they are releasing them in November because they believe an extra month of development would significantly improve its performance once people get their hands on them as they are already demoing the product at various locations in the wild. If they could sell more of them, they would probably release them sooner.
As for the revision console itself. I don't really believe they would have enough supply to cover more than 5-6M consoles sold in Q3/Q4 2010 or thereabout. Kinect doesn't appear to be as ready for prime time as the PS3 slim was in September given the lack of supply and the need for staggered launches. I therefore don't believe they would cut the price even though they likely could if they were so inclined. They can probably supply about what the market needs at $200 and $300 and $300 respectively. But if they were to cut the prices to $149, $249 and $249 respectively the short term sales increase would be too much to handle as they couldn't supply the short term boost or the big sales weeks in December.
