If you’ve been following the Microsoft rumors in the gadget blogs (and let’s face it, most of you don’t do that), you already suspected that the Microsoft Kinect (formerly known as Project Natal) was going to cost around $150. Microsoft has seemingly confirmed that price-point today, as discovered by Engadget today.

Listen Microsoft, we know you’ve been wanting to stay absolutely mum on Kinect‘s price since its official E3 unveiling, even as GameStop and Walmart say $149.99. Included is the Kinect sensor itself, power supply cable, manual, and WiFi extension cable (huh?), and it shows up in our virtual shopping cart just fine. So, now that your own official online store is giving that price tag on a pre-order page, don’t ya think this guy deserves something akin to a legitimate press release for its MSRP?

Pretty much everyone over here at SiliconANGLE who took a look at the Kinect stuff was elated over the possibilities it presented, and even though I had a few minor caveats, I remain very bull-ish on the device.

To the lay person and to the techie, the device add-on is very impressive. My wife took one look at the dancing and exercise demo videos from E3 that I showed her, and told me “We’re going to need two.”

To the point of my caveats, I did come up with a list of issues I had in general with the Microsoft E3 announcements. As I was pondering it this morning, looking over today’s news, it occurred to me that there is one important thing I wish Microsoft had announced at the event that I didn’t mention, a thought triggered by Kristen Nicole’s piece about the possible interoperability of the Microsoft Kin and the Microsoft Kinnect.

I wish that Microsoft had announced interoperability between the XBox and Skype. I wrote after WWDC that my chief reason for disapproval for FaceTime was that the lack of usefulness it’ll have since it’ll be limited to a very small subset of users I can call with video chat.  Certainly, Kinect won’t suffer from quite the same limited usefulness. MSN counts 330 million users on their service and Yahoo (which is interoperable with MSN Live) counts 248 million users on their service. I’m sure there’s quite a bit of overlap, and most of these users aren’t active, but they’re still both quite a bit smaller than Skype’s usercount of 800 million, even if you combine their two usercounts.

Moreover, Skype has a brand identity tied to innovative ways to communicate, like VoIP and video chat (not to mention SIP compatibility), whereas YIM and Live are identified with text chatting.

It’s just another thing on the wishlist – and a wish that I think has definite upsides for both parties.  Microsoft creates even more “must-have” buzz around Kinect, and Skype gets to storm the living room gates with Microsoft.