Things are now a lot cheaper, of course, with Microsoft selling Kinect for $149 and claiming that every unit sold is being sold at a profit. Most of that is of course down to the economy of scale, mass production and R&D, but let's not also forget that Kinect was originally intended to be a more powerful device than the one we'll be seeing next month.
With Kinect, Microsoft Aims for a Game Changer [New York Times]