After much speculation, Microsoft has finally announced the pricing of its new motion-sensing camera, Kinect - and it seems a little bit on the expensive side.
Coming bundled with a copy of Kinect Adventures - a mini game collection, full of games said to capture the 'spirit of adventure', including navigating through rapids, making your way through an obstacle course, or saving a leaky underwater laboratory, the motion sensing camera will set you back a whopping £129.99.
That's one hundred and twenty nine pounds, and ninety nine pence.
Quite possibly the greatest screenshot, from any game, ever. Even if we don't have a clue what's going on.
When you consider the Xbox 360 Arcade console (the most basic Xbox 360 bundle) weighs in at roughly the same price, it certainly makes the new peripheral seem a bit steep.
Of course, there's no use buying Kinect if you don't have a console to go with it, so for those who don't already own an Xbox 360, Microsoft have put together what may as well be a "Starter package" for Kinect.
Bundling a new, slim Xbox 360 with the Kinect camera and a copy of Kinect Adventures for £249.99, the new console will have all the same features as the current slim Xbox 360 - built in Wi-Fi, touch-sensitive buttons and a quieter fan, but this time it'll come with a matt black finish and a somewhat pathetic 4GB of internal flash memory. With Xbox Live Arcade games ballooning in size, that would be enough for anywhere between four to fifteen games, which means anyone looking to use the console seriously, and make the most of its features (such as downloading trailers from Xbox Live, or films from Zune) will have to buy a separate hard drive - but at least they'll have the option to buy it at a later date, if and when they feel ready.
Coming from someone who struggled to make everything fit on a 20GB hard drive for a year and a half, before finally upgrading to a 120GB one, the deal doesn't seem quite a sweet as many had hoped - especially considering the new, smaller Xbox 360 released the other week had a whopping 250GB of storage - for only £199.99. When taking into account the measly costs of storage as it is, the whole situation seems even stranger still. Would it have been that hard to stick a 60 GB hard drive in, just to get them started?
Kinect is due out this November, with the new 4GB console due out on the 20th August in the UK - in plenty of time to get ready for Kinect.
