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Forums - Microsoft - Natal possibly to be priced around $69,99

pbroy on 03 June 2009

M$ probably bought the competition so now it'll be harder for other companies to make similar products.

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Squilliam on 03 June 2009

^ Patent protection essentially. Once they own the patents they control the interface completely.



Tease.

selnor on 03 June 2009

There is no way M$ would make the price cost more than the Arcade. SO in UK I could see Natal being £89.99. But I bet M$ will do this Family bundle. 360 Arcade + Natal + Natal games pack for around £189.99. This would sell very well considering Wii is more expensive than that. M$ have to give it mass marketing campaign.



JaggedSac on 03 June 2009
Squilliam said:
JaggedSac said:
Orca_Azure said:
i still think Natal will be monstrously priced. 69.99 is how much some fancy keyboards cost- a motion sensing piece of equipment like that just seems to be too cheap at 70 dollars

Keyboards have huge profit margins as well.  M$ might want to have huge profit margins on this thing, but I doubt it.  They probably want to break even and have it help push more consoles and more software.  Do you know what exactly the components of the Natal are?  Without that knowledge it is hard to even speculate.  All we have to go on is someone saying their motion sensing camera could release to retail at $69.

Lets see, it has a video processor to compress the video stream (otherwise it wouldn't work in real time with USB) a high(ish) quality array microphone, a camera, a depth finder and years of software development. It would cost at minimum probably closer to $100 than $50 to make. So adding ~25% for retail margins would have us at a device which breaking even on the marginal costs of the unit itself (not the software/development costs) would cost at least $100 at retail.

Personally im expecting it to cost somewhere between $125-175 which isn't too far away from their highest priced accessory, the 120GB HDD.

They could probably lump software/development costs in R&D and not attempt to recuperate that from the hardware sales.  Voice recognition, facial recognition, etc have been being researched at M$ for a while and not in concert with this project.  So there was definitely some sharing going on there.

So you have a video camera plus high quality array mic, which is currently in an EyeToy which retails for $40 bucks.  So take %25 off that.

You have the infrared projector and processor.  I have no idea how much that would cost.

So a you have a product that takes at minimum $30 to manufacture, plus whatever the infrared projecter and processor costs.  Those could cost $70, but in bulk I doubt it.  So $100 is possible in my mind.

 



Squilliam on 03 June 2009
JaggedSac said:
Squilliam said:
JaggedSac said:
Orca_Azure said:
i still think Natal will be monstrously priced. 69.99 is how much some fancy keyboards cost- a motion sensing piece of equipment like that just seems to be too cheap at 70 dollars

Keyboards have huge profit margins as well.  M$ might want to have huge profit margins on this thing, but I doubt it.  They probably want to break even and have it help push more consoles and more software.  Do you know what exactly the components of the Natal are?  Without that knowledge it is hard to even speculate.  All we have to go on is someone saying their motion sensing camera could release to retail at $69.

Lets see, it has a video processor to compress the video stream (otherwise it wouldn't work in real time with USB) a high(ish) quality array microphone, a camera, a depth finder and years of software development. It would cost at minimum probably closer to $100 than $50 to make. So adding ~25% for retail margins would have us at a device which breaking even on the marginal costs of the unit itself (not the software/development costs) would cost at least $100 at retail.

Personally im expecting it to cost somewhere between $125-175 which isn't too far away from their highest priced accessory, the 120GB HDD.

They could probably lump software/development costs in R&D and not attempt to recuperate that from the hardware sales.  Voice recognition, facial recognition, etc have been being researched at M$ for a while and not in concert with this project.  So there was definitely some sharing going on there.

So you have a video camera plus high quality array mic, which is currently in an EyeToy which retails for $40 bucks.  So take %25 off that.

You have the infrared projector and processor.  I have no idea how much that would cost.

So a you have a product that takes at minimum $30 to manufacture, plus whatever the infrared projecter and processor costs.  Those could cost $70, but in bulk I doubt it.  So $100 is possible in my mind.

 

You forgot that it needs video compression hardware. That could easily add another $10-15 onto the bill of materials. Also the video cameras are higher quality than the Eyetoy due to the video compression hardware allowing this.



Tease.

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yo_john117 on 03 June 2009

They better actually pack in Natal in every single 360 when it comes out.  That would be the smartest thing to do.



JaggedSac on 03 June 2009
Squilliam said:
JaggedSac said:
Squilliam said:

Lets see, it has a video processor to compress the video stream (otherwise it wouldn't work in real time with USB) a high(ish) quality array microphone, a camera, a depth finder and years of software development. It would cost at minimum probably closer to $100 than $50 to make. So adding ~25% for retail margins would have us at a device which breaking even on the marginal costs of the unit itself (not the software/development costs) would cost at least $100 at retail.

Personally im expecting it to cost somewhere between $125-175 which isn't too far away from their highest priced accessory, the 120GB HDD.

They could probably lump software/development costs in R&D and not attempt to recuperate that from the hardware sales.  Voice recognition, facial recognition, etc have been being researched at M$ for a while and not in concert with this project.  So there was definitely some sharing going on there.

So you have a video camera plus high quality array mic, which is currently in an EyeToy which retails for $40 bucks.  So take %25 off that.

You have the infrared projector and processor.  I have no idea how much that would cost.

So a you have a product that takes at minimum $30 to manufacture, plus whatever the infrared projecter and processor costs.  Those could cost $70, but in bulk I doubt it.  So $100 is possible in my mind.

 

You forgot that it needs video compression hardware. That could easily add another $10-15 onto the bill of materials. Also the video cameras are higher quality than the Eyetoy due to the video compression hardware allowing this.

Why would they need higher quality video than the EyeToy?



HappySqurriel on 03 June 2009

With what Microsoft charges for Hard-drives, memory cards, and controllers (the Wavebird was $35, the XBox 360 controller is $50, and there isn't much more functionality from the XBox 360 controller) I don't expect it to be that affordable ... I wouldn't be that surprised if Microsoft tried to sell it for $200 with a bundled game. It doesn't take much market research to "justify" that price being that Rock Band and Guitar Hero: World tour (basically) sold very well at a similar price.



1337 Gamer on 03 June 2009
brythoma said:
I think the NATAL will probably end up selling for around $100 (the natal is probably a little more advanced and includes a microphone), and probably come with Milo and Kate (molyneux's virtual boy game).

Im predicting that at next years E3 we'll probably see the Xbox Arcade model drop down to $150 and the pro down to $199, and maybe do an elite model bundled with the NATAL for $300. Thats what I'd do if I were M$ and wanted to compete with both Ninty and Sony

i agree with this but i do expect M$ to subsidize costs in order to gain market penetration.



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Millennium on 03 June 2009

PSEye x2: $30 each
Duct Tape: $5/roll
Total: $65

Yeah; I could see $70. That would give them a little bit of a profit margin.



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