I think... MS is purposely telling retailers to price the Kinect at $150. Because the actual price will be considerably lower and consumers will think the "new" price is a bargain! Price cuts always help sales, so why not a price cut before the release? It's absolutely brilliant!

But maybe... just maybe.... this is just wishful thinking on my part. Because I refuse to believe MS will release a peripheral for that much.

I thought for a while this could be the case (and I still hope it is)

If its true then MS really is a crafty company.

That's possible...

I was thinking that as well. I don't see why they wouldn't announce a price but let Gamestop etc keep the $149 price up.

Or, $150 is the high end they are considering, and they are seeing how it goes.  It is a TEST run at marketing, to get feedback, more than some master scheme.  I would also believe there HAS to be at least one game bundled, if not two games, because Microsoft now tends to bundle two games with their systems.  The Sports and Adventure games feel very much like Bundle games for me.   One would then see sequels a few years from now.  Shoot, the Adventure game has the breakout game in it, which is a tipoff for me.  You don't mention them as bundle games, so that people think of them as full price games.

This is still my thought too.

Right now, who thinks the Kinect is $150?  People that constantly browse gaming forums and gaming blogs.  The people that are going to preorder Kinect before a price is announced are going to preorder it no matter, for everyone else, this is sure generating a constant amount of dialogue.

I saw someone mention in another thread about how there aren't a lot of Move topics because we knows everything about it.  We know how it works.  We know the games.  we know the price.  This doesn't leave a lot of room for speculation and doesn't leave a lot of room for people to talk about it

With Kinect, we don't know a lot about it.  This means people are talking about it.  Some good, some bad, but people are still talking about.  Additionally, the people that are talking about it are the right people for the moment: the hardcore gamers.

At this point, the casuals and the casual gamers don't matter a lot, they come into play closer to launch, right now it's all about getting the hardcore gamers just continuing to talk about Kinect.  If the Kinect can ride a constant stream of buzz until release, think how good that is?  Now think if there's that constant stream of buzz followed by a megaton like oh, Kinect is actually only $100?  Finally, think of if instead of the $150 or $100, if it were something closer to $80?  The internet would explode just like it did when FFXIII was announced for the 360.

I would have thought that when you pre-order a product you are entering into a contract and therefore that price is binding. Yeah sure, who is going to get upset if you got a pleasant surprise at the time of handover? There are issues with this. Very few may do this, but what happens if the pre-order is paid fully up front?

In Australia, we "layby" items all the time. It means you have fully paid for an item to get it at that price and then pick it up when it comes in or pick it up when both parties agree is a convenient time.

So, what I am saying is that with any pre-order, if monies are exchanged, you are binding the final price. It's a contract.

Agreed.  I think they still were planning $99, but preorders are going so well it may go $129.  But I'm fairly sure they will go under cost.

Most preorder places don't require you to put down the full price.  Some places like Amazon require you to but if the price lowers between the time you preordered it and it releases, you get money back (and if the price goes up, you still only pay your original price).

They often bundle two games but not two brand new games. A simple and cheap option would be to add Kinect support to an old game like Forza 3 and bundle that.

Anyhow, I presume they'll be bundling some sort of mini game collection like Wii Sports. But both Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures are available for pre-order. So I'm curious to see if they have something else planned for bundling or if one of those games will be bundled.