During E3 this year, Sony announced the official pricing for the PlayStation Move motion controller coming later this year. After yet another month of waiting for Xbox 360 fans, Microsoft finally announced the retail price for the company’s controller-free entertainment camera, Kinect. To follow suit, Microsoft’s leading instigator drove home another anti-Sony statement saying that Kinect will be a better value than Move.
As usual, Xbox Product Director Aaron Greenberg has been firing-off inflammatory statements about the competition. In response to a question regarding value of Xbox’s upcoming Kinect product, Greenberg said the following:
“Relative to the competition, we feel like we’re in a very envious position…”
Many have been arguing that the Kinect motion controller is overpriced with its $150 launch price tag, but the ability for two-players to enjoy the experience at that price may very-well make it desirable for consumers. The PlayStation Move controller on the other hand will retail at $50 per controller. What many fail to realize is that Kinect can only sustain two-players at a time while PlayStation Move will support up to four-players in several launch titles. The sub-controller for PlayStation Move has driven many to say it’ll cost more, but most games won’t require it while the ones that do will allow the player to use a DualShock 3 or Sixaxis in place of the sub-controller. This obviously isn’t taking into account that PlayStation Move requires the PlayStation Eye, but many PS3 owners already have a PlayStation Eye or can obtain one with the well-priced PlayStation Move Bundle for under $100.
The question is, will price really matter when it comes to how each of these two competing controllers will sell? History tells us that the price-point may very well be the most important statistic for driving sales. Software on the other hand is important to those that already own the device, but it’s hard to tell if it’ll make a big impact on sales. If it does matter, Sony’s motion controller clearly has the upper hand with a wide catalog of good-looking games spanning many genres.
Which do you think is the better value, Kinect or Move? Why?
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