neerdowell said:
Okay, so I was at Walmart earlier tonight looking for a component cable for my psp and I happened to spot all of the 360 accessories, and it occurred to me; there are so many hoping for Natal to launch at a mass market price to spur adoption rates. However, looking at this realistically, almost every one of Microsoft's accessories is twice the price that it needs to be ($40 web camera, $60 headset), so what makes anybody think that Microsoft will launch Natal at a reasonable price (aside from being bundled with the system, which does nothing for the 30+ million existing owners)?
Yes, I am aware that Microsoft is conscious of not pricing Natal out of the reach of consumers, however, it is not a standard practice of Microsoft to price anything inexpensively (yes, the console itself was cheaper than the ps3; this is more because the ps3 was expensive, not because the 360 was ever cheap). It is more likely Microsoft will charge an absurd price (at least what I feel is absurd, like around $100) and simply use their marketing genius to make others feel this is a value. I refuse to believe that Natal, an advanced camera with a built-in processor, is going to launch within $20 dollars of their standard web camera.
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First, what headset were you looking at? Probably a third party Turtle Beach HEADPHONES + headset with surround sound? The standard Xbox Live headset is like $15. Second, all other pricing of MS accessories is well within the norm for the industry EXCEPT hard drives and wireless since neither of the competitors sell those. In fact, MS's chat pad for the 360 comes with a headset for $30 and that's much better value than the $50 chat pad for the PS3!!! And the 360 wireless controllers are now about $5-10 cheaper than the PS3 or Wii controllers! *GASP*
The truth is, wireless N usb adapters do still cost about $60-70 on PC for a decent one, and upwards of $100+ for a really good one. So even their wireless is not THAT much more expensive.
The only thing I will definitely give you is that HDD prices are way too high for the 360.
Now, about Natal. We have no idea what the manufacturing costs of the device is going to be, but the rumors are there will be 5 million ready for launch. A batch of that size would mean they could sell these for much cheaper than if they just made 500k or 1 million. It is also likely that the manufacturing costs of Natal won't be that expensive compared to the wireless adapter since the adapter itself is not made in anywhere near as large of quantities.
So, the actual camera technology is rumored to cost about $30 to manufacture, add the CPU and memory needed for the onboard software and I bet it takes about $50-75 to manufacture at most. They could then sell it to old console owners for $75-100 and include it with every new 360 without taking much of a loss at all. Like Kim said, they are treating Natal like the launch of a new console, and what do consoles do when they first launch (or still do in the case of the PS3)? The loss lead. They could sell Natal for $50 and take a minor loss knowing that would be made up in software purchases, not to mention Natal will likely be used on the NextBox as well so it would be a long term Forwardly Compatible purchase.
