14 DAY TRIAL // A Microsoft executive has claimed that when the Kinect motion tracking system is released on November 4 the company will profit from every unit which is sold to gamers, despite the big initial investment in development and the 500 million dollars price tag for the advertising campaign that will inform the public about the new peripheral.
Don Mattrick, who is the president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft, has been quoted as saying that Kinect will retail at a profit, which probably means that the company will spend less on making the device that the 150 dollars it will ask from buyers.
Mattrick also said that the initial prototype for Kinect cost 30,000 dollars to make and suggested that the development cost for the device is over 100 million dollars.
Kinect is an ambitious device, using no physical controller and tracking movements that gamers perform in order to translate them into input for the Xbox 360 interface and various video gaming experiences.
Microsoft has revealed that it has 19 titles ready to launch alongside Kinect and the company aims to expand the offering as 2011 comes around.
At the moment most games are linked to fitness, dancing simulation and virtual pet experiences.
Analysts are saying that before the end of the year Microsoft could sell as many as 4 million Kinect devices, creating a sizable market which will attract other developer and lead to a bigger number of games that support the new technology.
The biggest challenge to Kinect comes from the Sony made PlayStation Move, which launched in September and includes a physical controller to aid motion tracking.
Sony says that it has sold more than 1.5 million units of Move in Europe and shipped over 1 million in the United States.
Nintendo is also widely expected to respond to the launch of the rival motion tracking devices with a new version of its Wii home console.