14 DAY TRIAL // The price of Kinect that has been recently listed by various retailers has finally been confirmed by Microsoft. The motion-control device is now available for pre-order on the company's official online store for the price of 149.99 dollars, the exact same value previously offered by listings on Amazon, Gamestop and Best Buy.
The website also details what comes in the Kinect package. The box will contain the Kinect sensor, a power supply cable, a user's manual and a Wi-Fi extension cable. Important information for those gamers who have the small apartment and a huge TV set that Kevin Butler was referring to at Sony's E3 conference, Kinect needs at least six feet, that is about 1.8 meters, of space between the player and the television.
A few technical specifications are also stated on the product's page. Apparently, one of Kinect's cameras is a VGA Motion Camera running at 30 frames per second in a 640x480 resolution, while the other one is a Depth Camera running at the same 30 frames per second in a 640x480 resolution. Furthermore, Microsoft's motion controller also has an array of four microphones that support single-speaker voice recognition.
Kinect is what Robbie Bach called the mid-life kicker for the Xbox 360, Microsoft's answer to the Nintendo Wii. The device allows its owners to control their Xbox 360 console without any use of a pad, only by gestures and voice commands, removing the need for any physical devices or pressing any buttons. While Microsoft is aiming to expand the 360's audience, targeting the casual market, many developers around the company promised that Kinect would also cater to the core gamers' needs and would truly be an innovation. Reports have not been thoroughly positive for Kinect until now, as many who have tried it have claimed that there is a noticeable lag between the player's movements and their occurrence on screen.