Xbox 360 Kinect Motion Controller Comes Nov 4 At $US150

Microsoft’s locked down their Kinect pricing, availability and bundling, and it’s pretty much what everyone knew. It’s $US150 on November 4 for the standalone, and $US300 bundled with a 4GB version of the new, smaller Xbox.

As we found out back at E3, there’s an “arcade” version of the new Xbox 360. That will be $US200 on August 3, come with 4GB of flash storage and built-in Wi-Fi. The difference between this and the big brother standard version is that the hard drive slot is empty (but it is there, for later expansion) and comes in a matte finish.

Both the $US150 standalone Kinect and the $US300 bundle will come with Kinect Adventures, basically Microsoft’s version of Wii Sports (but not really sports, more like outdoor activities).

Microsoft has also said that their first-party Kinect games will be $US50, $US10 less than the standard $US60 games now. When asked about the small discount, Microsoft said that they wanted to appeal to the casual gamer more with the lower price.

I also asked about the Walmart retail bundles where they package a game, a $US30 gift card and the Kinect for $US200. Microsoft has no direct control over these, but it seems likely that Walmart will either lower the price or add in another game, seeing as you’re actually paying $US20 more than the standard retail price for this bundle.

Oh, and they’ve also locked down the price of Dance Central, our favourite Kinect game so far, to $US50.