14 DAY TRIAL // Activision is not entirely happy with the price points Microsoft and Sony have set for their motion controllers. Recent reports state that Microsoft will ask customers for 150 dollars for Kinect, while Sony will ask 50 dollars for the Move wand, 30 dollars for the Move navigation controller and another 40 for the PlayStation Eye camera.
According to Activision's Chief Operations Officer, Thomas Tippl, his company is concerned that these relatively steep prices might not translate well into sales. “I think as a publisher, you have to be concerned about how the price drives a lot of the outcome of how big of an install base there's going to be. The bigger the install base, the more likely that you can make sense out of your investment. So, the lower the price, the better. In this economic environment, it's probably more important than ever,” he told Gamasutra.
Furthermore, the Activision exec said that he did not think Move and Kinect would cater to all tastes and really enhance every experience. Some core games would still be fit for traditional controllers, Tippl thought. There would be a few franchises that Activision owned and that could benefit from these new means of control, like Tony Hawk or Rapala Fishing, but, as Tippl said, motion control is “not going to be something that will be in every game, because I don't think it's one size fits all.”
This is not the first time Activision has expressed its low opinion of high hardware pricing. In 2009, before the launch of the slim version of the PlayStation 3, Activision's CEO, the infamous Bobby Kotick, warned Sony that his company would stop producing games because of the relatively small install base the PlayStation 3 had at that time. While many other publishers have been quick to embrace the motion-control madness that swept this and last year's E3, Activision has stayed true to its word and has not announced any games for Kinect or Move yet.