I wonder how a company that was blatantly honest and blunt would be viewed by consumers? Interesting... 

Let me add that "No game in box" isn't exactly a big deal to me.  When I got my Live Vision camera, there wasn't a game in the box.  But since we live in such modern times, I was able to download Uno (which I already owned so I gave my code to somebody else) and Totemball (the shittiest game I've ever played) free of charge.  Maybe some Kinect games --most of them, if MS has any sense--will be downloadable.  I just don't see going full retail and putting a lot of money into games that will only sell to a fraction of the audience.

Just see what happened to sony when they were honest about the price of the ps3 :P

MSFT is "announcing" a $150 price so they can actually drop the price before their was even a price. The rip in the fabric of time from such a move could be devastating, but brilliant. A Price cut before theres a price to cut. Wowza.

I still don't understand how $150 is competitive!

I think I might pay attention to it more if they did so (as well as the media).  Come out and say that, get a shitton of publicity and then set an awesome price a few weeks before release?  

Would get some AMAZING converge that way.  Hell, regardless of the product if I could afford it I would buy it after that type of move :)

If we accept the premise that Kinect is going for the "casual audience" (and if it is, we can write it off now), then a retail release of its games is probably the better route, since  the people who follow the digital distribution games tend to be the most upstream of gamers, i.e. the people who are least likely to purchase Kinect software!

So true :D

You could be onto something here.

At the absolute worst, there will be a $50 discount off Kinect when purchased in a bundle ($299 Arcade, $399 250GB).

But if MS wants to raise consumer frenzy amongst any potential buyers, they could just bundle Kinect for free or close to it ($250 Arcade, $350 250GB).

Of course if supply issues are a problem, there is no reason for MS to "give away" Kinect if they can sell the peripheral for a profit and still run through all their initial inventory.

Plus, I'm pretty sure MS has some slack when it comes to potential discounts on the 360S. They may well just drop the price of the 250GB SKU to $250 when all existing stock of the previous Jasper based models are sold.

Standalone kits are another issue though. If MS wants most of its existing userbase to adopt, then a $99 MSRP is much more likely than the current $149. But, going back to the initial inventory issue; if MS is selling out of Kinect kits at $149, why cut the price? So they can sell out for $50 less per unit?

That might sound so wrong =s