Activision Concerned About Move/Kinect Pricing

Tuffcub 23 Comments

Activision COO Thomas Tippl has voiced concerns regarding the pricing of Move and Kinect. Speaking to Gamasutra he said,

“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 [for hardware].”

“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.”

Wise words Mr Tippl, wise words. Cheaper pricing would mean more sales and the many more games could be developed for the system.

By the way, sold many £120 DJ Hero controllers recently?

Source: Gamasutra

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23 Comments

  1. I hate hypocrites. Practice what you preach.

  2. I’m concerned about Move/Kinect pricing as well, but I’m also equally concerned about Activision’s attempts to push up game’s RRPs or their attempts to sell a crappy peripheral which needs renewing every other release

    • Indeed – ‘It’s a platform!’; is it f**k.

  3. Yeah Activision be concerned about pricing when you are putting £54.99 RRP on games and selling Map Packs for £10 that include old maps.

  4. yeah i think mr activision needs to take a long look in the mirror, and re evaluate his pricing strategies… specially now vat is up…

  5. Price dictates nearly everything (hardware and software) although it’s a good point. These motion-controllers aren’t out of the box as standard. Every Wii has a controller (doesn’t it?) whereas MS and Sony still box the normal analogue controllers we all know and love. Obviously, the latter want to see millions of people buy Kinect/Move but it’s not going to happen unless the price is keen enough to get us on-board. Same as when the PS3 was too expensive. Same as when HDTV was too expensive, etc, etc, etc.

    • As a publisher though, they are faced with upfront costs in investing in a game. If the pricing of Move/Kinect doesn’t sit well with customers, then at least Sony & MS will still make money from the devices in the long run, but as a publisher Activision could make a loss on those upfront investments particularly if the new controllers sell weaker than expected.

      Whilst it may seem off to us, it is just some company man speaking out for his own company’s interest, and who can blame that

      • Not sure if my initial comment came across weirdly but I completely agree. They don’t want to invest resources into something that’s not being purchased in suitably large quantities as it’ll never justify the development of any given Kinect/Move game.

        Obviously if Kinect/Move do well then I’d expect to see them potentially bundled with the next generation of consoles as standard.

      • How do you know the Move controller won’t be bundled with the PS3?

        Has that been stated somewhere?

      • yep, they’ll be bundles but if the pricing is higher than the sweet-spot either tech will struggle to gain adoption amongst the 35m & 40m+ (respectively) installed base

      • Thanks cc. We’re looking at MS and Sony trying to get some of it’s 35 to 40 million owners to get a Move or a Kinect (respectively) and it’s going to be tricky if the price is too high. This means the audience for motion-based games is potentially too small and publishers/developers won’t look to putting too much resource behind such titles. With the Wii, the controller was in there as default so it meant Wii game devs knew what they had to work with from the offset.

        Same goes for PS3 60GB/40GB/etc. All devs knew there was a hard drive to play with from the get-go.

  6. It’s new technology, expect to pay through the nose for it on release and shortly after. And we only have ourselves to blame for accepting to pay what is dictated to us. Yes people moan about 10 quid map packs but what percentage actually spoke with their wallets in terms of overall percentage?, very few i expect.

  7. LMFAO.

    That is all.

    • Tuffcub: making my job harder every single day.

  8. Dear o Dear Activision. Funniest comments ever made.

  9. I love that little sub-haeding there TC “Pot, meet Kettle”

    One of those “Funny because its true” moment

    • I was about to write exactly the same thing, then I saw your comment!!! lol ;)

  10. So can we expect loads of cheap games from Activision in future..? Yeah right.

    • LMFAO!!! Good one man. They want to talk about things being too expensive?? They should lower some of their fucking prices!

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