This "500 Million Dollars" number could mean for one or two years of marketing or

Marketing referes to anything that will help sell an item. So marketing could mean the cost of the 360 bundles with Kinect! so each 400 dollar/300 dollar kinect bundle is included in the 500 million dollar marketing as well as tv ads and such.

what do you think about these theories?

Highly doubt it.

That doesn't even make sense.  Why would the cost of the 360 bundle be considered marketing? WTF? I am not even sure what you are trying to say really..very confused.

I think you need to find the source that said they spent 500 million dollars on marketing first.

Then read this article.

If there is nothing in the article to support or deny your claims, and this includes finding the source of the articles. And further research into the investigation yields the same.

In order to support your claims you could also look at previous reports of MS marketing spending and try to correlate them with bundles of the products they sell.

i agree =p

Downplaying success is bad, but upplaying is fine, right.

If you are referring to Microsoft subsidizing Kinect bundles with part of that budget, then probably. They did it on the original Xbox, which also had a $500 million marketing campaign.

The more I read this, the more confused I become. The cost of making the Kinect bundles is included in marketing? Since when? Pretty weird theory that makes no sense.

Troll attempt? Why would manufacturing cost be in marketing? Anyway, not sure for how long those 500 are supposed to last but, its at least 1 year and if it is we probably gonna get even more commercials soon.

the definition of marketing is anything to help sell an item. bundling is def a way of selling something. so 400 million dollars od bundles and 100 million of ads makes sence for this holiday