The current Kinect sold, packaged and marketed by itself costs Microsoft roughly 46 dollars per unit. At least last year. Packaged with every Xbox, that price will drop (unless of course the new parts cost significantly more than the old parts, but we already know the knew via the rumor mill Kinect wont have a motor in it anymore). If Microsoft want to eat some of that cost of each sale, they've got deep enough pockets to do so. Especially if it gives them an advantage in price, which it's looking more and more like they're going to do. It's also starting to look like Sony is going to be packing in the new Eye. Based off current rumored specs, it wouldn't surprise me to see the PS4 priced between 400 and 500 dollars and the next Xbox from 300-400.
It certainly appears that the BOM will be less for the new Xbox.
I am going to speculate that Kinect's PrimeSense tech has been replaced by the 3DV stuff. There are a couple reasons I think this.
1. MS would rather not pay PrimeSense anything if they do not have to, especially since they purchased 3DV. In a Kinect BOM breakdown they speculated ~$17 for the PrimeSense reference design and hardware, so that number would certainly be a good place to start in trying to reduce the costs of Kinect. PrimeSense has to make a profit in all this.
2. There is now an IR stream that is usable for devs for helping facial recognition in low light situations. The PrimeSense IR pattern would not be particularly useful for this. VGLeaks stated that the active IR stream is what is actually being used for producing the depth data. So given that this more accurate IR stream is being used for depth sensing, one can assume the PrimeSense pattern based stuff is gone.
(
BOM breakdown)
People mention no motor as a reduction in cost, which there is some, just won't be much. Perhaps there is some cost inherent in having to test this component as it is certainly something that would be most likely to fail in the hardware.
They have removed the motor so that will drop the cost probably around ~$0.50 when buying in such large bulk.(
https://www.verical.com/partID/1562...ogItemView&searchName=&searchCriterion=mpnIDs)
They will probably not need that accelerometer anymore. So that is probably another ~$0.50 when buying in bulk. (
http://ruilong.member.seekic.com/product_center/KXSD9.html)
So those two things don't change much of the cost, but do lower things. We obviously don't know how much the improved hardware is going to cost so of course this is all speculation.
Then there is packaging and such that add to current costs that won't be there in the future. So MS is certainly taking a hit to their total BOM for the next box, but I think they will still have a price advantage against the new playstation BOM. If Sony have a camera with every box(which is not confirmed to be the case), a controller with the touch stuff on it(the xbox controller could of course have some new stuff on it, possibly a break apart controller for Kinect), GDDR5, and more powerful stuff.
If MS is looking to control the living room with this thing, they have to come in at the right price.