Acti concerned by Move-Kinect price

The world’s largest third party publisher has admitted that it is concerned” about the price point of both Sony’s Move and Microsoft’s Kinect.

Though Sony’s Move appears fairly cheap on the face of it, with a Move controller costing 39.99 and the Starter Bundle costing 49.99, the pennies soon add up for users who want the ‘complete’ Move experience. Add the Navigation Controller to that and the total cost becomes 80. For the complete two-player set-up you’re looking at 150.

The RRP for Kinect remains unconfirmed, though looks likely to be around $150 in the US and in excess of 100 in the UK.

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,” COO Thomas Tippl told Gamasutra.

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.”

The comments echo those made last week where Tippl said that Activision will likely support both motion devices – but only when the market is in place to justify the costs.

[Our support] will depend on the price point they choose,” Tippl added. We have a few franchises where we think this could be an interesting value to improve the experience for the player. Tony Hawk is an example. We have our Rapala Fishing franchise.

But it’s not going to be something that will be in every game, because I don’t think it’s one size fits all. It’s not going to enhance the experience for every game.”