Today, Microsoft officially announced the pricing of its Kinect motion controller. It'll be retailing at the not-so-modest price of £129.99 along with a free copy of Kinect: Adventures.
Also revealed was an Xbox plus Kinect bundle, priced at £249.99. At this point, it's already a lot more expensive than a Wii - not to mention that the Xbox in question only has 4GB of internal flash memory.
Far from the rumoured £50 price point (which, realistically, was never going to materialise), Kinect is in danger of pricing itself out of the market.
We've seen how poor the launch line-up of games is looking for Kinect, and unless anything radical is unveiled between now and its release, it'll be stuck without titles that justify its existence.
In short, Kinect will be a mini-game feast for the opening months of its release. You can get that from Nintendo, and the shortcomings of the 4GB bundle are obvious. Indeed, it tots up to the same price as a PS3 slim console minus Sony's motion offering, Move.
But how long will it be before that 4GB needs upgrading? Yet more cash. For the long-term, Kinect really isn't a viable investment. People - families especially - who just want the system itself and to simply top it up with a few games every so often are not going to be best buds with Microsoft when they discover extra outlay is needed after a certain point.
And all for some frantic flapping during mini-games? On that front, Microsoft is four years late to the party. For such entertainment, there's only one word on the minds of consumers: Wii.
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