14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft first announced its Project Natal at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June, but it was rather unspecific regarding how close the project was to its finalization. Neither a release date nor any details regarding how much it might cost have been offered as of yet. The camera-sensing motion technology was faced with a rival from Sony, and, when the Japanese company announced that its motion-sensing LED-controller would arrive in spring 2010, Microsoft was expected to step up to the challenge and release Natal in 2010 as well.
But both aspects, the release date and an estimated price, have apparently been leaked, and MCV is proud to make them public. Keeping its sources anonymous, MCV has announced that it got its tips from people that attended a closed-doors meeting arranged by Microsoft with several British developers and publishers, most likely concerning software support for the device. In these meetings, Project Natal received a November 2010 launch date, which would make a lot of sense, since Microsoft seems to have a soft spot for this month. Most of its previous unveilings took place during the month of November, the one this year being the Xbox Live integration of Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm.
If MCV's tips regarding the launch date were, indeed, news, but not shocking, and thus quite believable, the prices that it says the device will be going for seem like a bit of a stretch. According to the Market for Home Computing and Video Games, Project Natal will be priced somewhere between $100-$150, but could even go as low as £50 or about $83. MCV's explanation for this is that Microsoft is "trying to get as close as possible to [an] 'impulse buy.'"
But Microsoft's past exploits tend to state something different, and it has never been shy about peddling its products at steep prices. Its 120 GB hard drive is priced at $150 and the Wireless N Networking Adapter is going for $100, so a device that features something as high-tech as facial and voice recognition, as well as three-dimensional motion sensing, seems unlikely to be priced at anything near $100, and in no way under that. As for an official response, it's the same one that we could have reported without actually waiting for it. "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation," is what a Microsoft representative declared.