Majority of PS4 buyers are uninterested in motion controls

When consumers go to retailers this holiday season to pick up a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, they’ll be smacked in the face with $100 price differential between the two consoles. The biggest differentiator between the Xbox One and the PS4 (specs aside) will be the Kinect camera included with the Xbox One. So why didn’t Sony include their PlayStation Eye with the PS4? It turns out that it would have resulted in massive losses for the company, but they were considering doing it anyway — and still might do so at a later date.

The majority of our audience wants a full controller interface

As it stands, Sony will be selling the PlayStation 4 for $400 at a loss. Including the camera in the bundle would have made the console a losing proposition for the company, and Sony doesn’t think that their consumers are really interested in being forced to purchase the PlayStation Eye. Sony’s Andrew House said in a recent interview with Business Spectator that “Certainly for the earlier part of the lifecycle, the vast majority of the audience that we speak to tells us that their primary wish is for the full controller interface and there’s not necessarily a huge emphasis being placed on camera interaction.”

But this doesn’t mean things can’t change. House also says that Sony could adjust their message in the coming years, and possibly even offer the camera in a hardware bundle down the line. Right now though, Sony is interested in hitting that “magic price” of $399, which makes the console both more attractive from a consumer’s value standpoint while not breaking the bank at Sony.