The price of innovation – Move, Kinect, 3DS

It has Wii MotionPlus bang to rights on the coolness front, at the very least.

PlayStation Move

The major challenge Sony faces with Move is to persuade the market that its more advanced interpretation of the Wii’s USP is sufficiently advanced to justify the additional baseline cost of a PlayStation 3, still comfortably the most intimidating purchase out there.

In itself, the Move range is a little on the expensive side: a Starter Pack including the controller, PlayStation Eye camera and a game disc will set you back $100/£50.00 on Amazon, with the sub-controller thankfully optional (the existing Sixaxis controller can be used instead). By comparison, Amazon offers the Wii Remote with MotionPlus unit for $40-50/£10-15.

If casual shoppers may perhaps be deterred, seeing little to distinguish the device from Nintendo’s save cost, it’s worth remembering that Sony is marketing Move as much to Uncharted and InFamous players as fans of EyePet and Singstar. The manufacturer has made much of the wand’s contribution to the third-person action of SOCOM 4, and responses from gun-nuts we’re acquainted with have been cautiously positive.

The eternally-quotable Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities thinks that PS3′s high definition capabilities could be decisive in convincing Wii customers to defect. ‘That’s a very easy upsell for Sony to say, “If you have a Wii and you really want to play high-def games on your new big high-def TV, we’ve got ‘em.”’

How many fresh copies of Minority Report have sold since this was announced?

Kinect

Microsoft has more to prove with its latest peripheral than Sony does – the leap from the Eyetoy camera to Kinect is greater, conceptually and technologically, than the leap from Wii MotionPlus to PlayStation Move – but, potentially, more to gain. The peripheral is being billed as a living room revolution, changing not merely how we play games but how we watch TV or films, listen to music and use the internet.

The company has put off announcing a price till this year’s Gamescom event in August, but Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy have settled on a preorder tag of $149.99. While this is actually cheaper than the full roster of Move accessories, given that you’ll only need one Kinect unit for local multiplayer, the figure still catapults Kinect well out of impulse-buy territory – and again, there’s the secondary expense of the console itself to consider.

The consequences of over-pricing are steeper here because Kinect is so clearly aimed at the larger market, away from the shooter/action fans who currently make up the bulk of the Xbox business. Reports of high latency continue to bother the Master Chiefs and Soap MacTavishes of the gaming ecosphere, and Microsoft’s E3 2010 presser was, if anything, heavier on so-called ‘casual’ content than Nintendo’s were at the height of the Wii’s allure.

If the company is serious about courting those who might otherwise get their kicks from FarmVille or Wii Sports Resort, a little belt-tightening is requisite. Microsoft’s pockets are deep: it needs to dig into them once again if Kinect is to become a mainstream hit.

What’s the most you’d pay for 3DS, Move and Kinect, readers?