http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=254869

Crazy, isn't it?

I'm happy that you went back and more thoroughly looked through the thread for evidence.

However, I left things out. And part of what I left out is the explanation for my reasoning. 

When I said sub 100$ kinect, I was originally thinking that MS was going to drop the retailer price and therefore the retailer would sell it cheaper. However, you can't bet that. How can you know what the manufacturer does, and even if they did, why would they then release a statement about it? That would be terrible publicity.

I revised that original bet because taking the thread of logic, (the lowering of manufacturer price->lowering of retail price), if MS were to lower the retailer price to somewhere around 99$, I firmly believe that retailers will be giving it away in some form. 

Sure it will be with tvs and home theaters etc etc, but there are a couple stores that usually give big gift cards on 360 purchases. If someone bought a 360 and got a 100$ gift card, which is usually used to enticed the purchase of higher margin items and encourage traffic...they could forgo the giftcard completely and give away the kinect, forcing game sales, (which is what both the retailer and MS wants the most) in turn pressuring MS to give a better price on 360 and kinect units. 

It's a little bit more complicated than the usual 100$ giftcard, but depending on how badly MS wants to push this, it could be much more lucrative, especially on the advent of major hardware release.

Another reason I believe this, is because of the recent MS 500m$ campaign for kinect. I believe that

a) 500m$ is for the kinect's lifetime advertising
b) for special sales throughout this christmas
c) to make retailers think it is going to sell a lot

Add to it, the evidence that MS only has 200k units available for pre-order in the US, it seems like they either haven't actually produced that many because they lack confidence in the product, or they are trying to incite hype through unavailability. 

The latter speaks volumes. MS main goal is selling units to retailers, not the public. The purpose of shortages is to make retailers want them. Once they realize the demand is manufactured, they are going to be left with hundreds of thousands of units (which they will get at a good price) and they will prey upon the consumers by having these big kinect deals.

It's kind of like how even during wii shortages and ps3 shortages early in the lifetime, there were thousands of free raffles, free promotions with purchases etc etc.

In the wii's case, it was warranted shortage, but on the other hand retailers made a pretty good profit of wii sales. In fact, most of retailer income from wii comes from the peripherals and the games. 

It's different strategies for different things.

PS: I just wanted to clarify that there won't be stock on the shelves. There are warehouses full of shelves and big box stores get deliveries everyday during christmas. They will drop the price based on how much is in the warehouse and how much is being sold. 

tl;dr

MS is going to use a shortage strategy on top of the recent advertising budget press release to get retailers to buy as many kinects as possible. Many stores will be left with surplus and need to run promotions (not to get rid of them) to bring in traffic and money. Influential stores will have even greater surplus purchased at a better price. These stores will no doubt give away kinects.

On the other hand, if kinect really is a break away success, there will be no price drop it will sell attached to huge margin items like HD tvs, and cars etc. Promotions would be something like buy kinect get one game. 

what makes you want to be a jackass lol, i wanted to know if other people felt the same as i did

 My friends felt the same way when they cancelled there preorders after trying it out at one of those kinect showings saying that all of the games there a glitchy, laggy wii sports knocks offs with the exception of dance central which was the only solid game there. I was gonna rebuy a 360 for kinect back then when it was known as Natal, but with what ive been seeing and hearing from my buddies its a utter joke.

hope this makes you feel better :)

@tensen1212

I would say make your own mind up as I could tell you a story of my daughter and her large group of friends who went to Alton Towers tried it out and all came back raving about it to a man.

Nobody is saying buy it day one but get yourself into a store and try it for yourself. Comments on this forum certainly should be taken with a pretty huge pinch of salt.

True.  Amazing where people find business ideas sometimes.

I find it sad how many anti-xbox fanboys are in here talking about how bad kinect is and how this is yet another microsoft cover-up to distort the publics perception.  Look, you already know you are not going to be buying this product, it is on the xbox, you are anti-everythingMS.  So what do you do? You hop on an online forum to speculate that no press coverage = automatic bad product.  Historically this just simply is not true; particularly when it comes to tech.  Use just the smallest bit of logic here; MS has active kinect stations all across america and has been touring with it for months.  It has been on display and had early reviews from all the major gaming community figures. Furthermore, this is an extremely large company with responsibilities to shareholders,  if it was so severely flawed they would not be having a $500 million advertising campaign and they would not have so many launch titles with such large 3rd party support.  The bottom line is that your anti-MS bias is showing, and badly.

I dont think MS is trying to cover up a poorly working piece of hardware. I tried Kinect at E3, and I can confirm that it is responsive and accurate. The tech is pretty cool.

I do think MS is trying to shield the poor games from being picked apart by the media. Again, I played Joyride and Kinect Sports... and I cannot see either reviewing pratcualrly well.

It really all comes down to math... if Nintendo can develop a quality family/casual/non-core games and they get shredded and disemboweled by a media industry that is strongly against those types of games, then what hope does MS have when they develop a poor quality family/casual/non-core game? MS recognizes this, and its a prudent move to embargo in this case. If I was them, I would still embargo even if the titles were as good as a WiiSports Resort, just because negative press from the gaming media would still occur.

Its really a no win situation. In 2005-2006 Nintendo realized this and invested strongly in creating buzz around other forms of media and bloggers who were not a part of the gaming media. A grassroots approach like that is neccassary. MS just hasnt had the time to do it.

as if the people that will be buying kinect even know review sites exist, wasted time by M$ if true.....

Hands-on is different (at least should be different) than a review. Hopefully a reviewer plays a game for a few days before reviewing it. Of course this is not always the case and often it shows. I find Sports Champions fun for about a day and haven't touch it much since.

I too think Kinect itself works. Maybe one of the reason to limit reviewers from reviewing the games is after some time with the game  these reviewers get "ME Too" feeling as most of these games already been done on the Wii (then again somewhat with Move).  The real question is not how much the hardware is different from the other MC but just how big the difference in the actual games.