#FF00AA

Meanwhile, the hard-drive-less new Xbox is gonna be $200. One is a supercomputer; the other is two webcams on a motorized stick. One is sold at a loss, or at cost, subsidized by games sales; the other… well, it would sell games, too, if it weren’t so damn expensive, wouldn’t it?

I can’t believe there’s a valid engineering or manufacturing reason for this price point (most of the cost of Kinect has to be software, and with software you do make it up in volume), so this can’t be anything but a total failure of marketing and strategy — someone evidently believes they’ll never sell enough units to recoup the development costs, and priced the peripheral in accordance… with their self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words, an eminently Microsoftian strategy.