As we reported last week, Double Fine's Kinect Party (the follow-up to Happy Action Theater) will debut on Xbox Live Arcade this Tuesday. From that day until December 31 it will be free for anyone to own. But how much will it cost to buy if you don't grab it within that time period? After the game switches to a paid model, it will actually be sold in a fairly interesting way. Read on for the details.
Play Free
The Kinect Party base download is Free! Download it from XBLA and get all this instantly:
- Chop Master (pictured at top), Monster Attack, Costume Party, Balloons and Future Booth
- Facebook functionality
- Photo Editing
- Owners of Happy Action Theater get all of the original channels unlocked
Holiday Promotion
- The entire unlocked game with all 36 channels are free through Dec. 31st 2012!!!
Post Holiday Pricing
After the holiday promotion, the game will cost
- $10 to unlock everything
- $5 to unlock everything for owners of Double Fine Happy Action Theater
- $1 to unlock any individual channel
There you have it. The free base game includes five channels (minigames) and Kinect Party's new Facebook photo sharing and photo editing features. People who already own Happy Action Theater will unlock all of its channels for free. Those preexisting owners can get all of the new content for only $5/400 MS Points. You can also unlock individual channels for a buck (not a great value), or buy the whole shebang for $10/800 MS Points.
In other words, the complete Kinect Party experience will be $10, just like the original game was. Considering how redundant the sequel makes Happy Action Theater, expect the first game to either receive a price drop or get delisted before long. And remember, you can get this full $10 game for free as long as you download and install it between December 18-31.
Kinect Party is a motion-controlled minigame collection that can be enjoyed by people from ages 2-99. Double Fine has gone out of its way to make sure that menus and instructions don't bog down the experience. Best of all, the game supports cooperative play for up to 6 people. We'll have a full co-op review later this week!