It's considered outlandish, because they spent more advertising the 360 than Nintendo did advertising the Wii and DS combined.

That article mentions a figure covering a few years and specifically mentions it was used to advertise across Sony's huge range of products.

It's a good point to show that Sony are no stranger to spending big on advertising, but I think the reason contention exists on this $500m issue is because there's a lack of information. Some sources seem to claim it was all spent within a short period of a few months pushing Kinect alone, while I've seen some posters claim it was probably spent over the course of a year or so and also included general 360 advertising. Then there's the dispute over whether $500m is considered a large figure for advertising in the industry or not. Judging from Nintendo's advertising budget, $500m is big. In the context of advertising spend per platform, MS spent more on one platform than any of the others, by quite a huge number. (This is assuming Sony isn't some how actually spending more than MS or Nintendo.) However, if one were to believe that the $500m was actually all spent on Kinect over the course of a short period of time (6 months or so) then the figure looks, and is by all available information, absolutely enormous.

These sort of disputes wouldn't exist if all the information was readily available. (I'd love to see figures on how much Sony are spending on the PS3 alone.) If this information is actually available, I haven't seen it, but I'd like to.

I'm afraid you misunderstood the article: Sony's advertising budget in 2010, was 5 billion, just as it was in 2009 (see here for proof), NOT 5 billion across multiple years.  As noted, Sony does have multiple products to spread across, however if the entire Playstation division got only 5% of that budget (laughable) that would far exceed the budget for Kinect.

Additionally as noted in the linked article, Nintendo's spent 117 billion yen that year (maybe 1.5 Billion USD depending on exchange rates) on the Wii and DS...not less than 500 million.

And yet, I still think there is NOTHING wrong with any of that.  If you have the money and/or need to increase your position in the marketplace. Advertise!  Advertise the hell out of it and give your products a chance in a very competitive market.

So, I'm sorry but I don't agree that there is anything wrong with having an aggressive advertising campaign, and I think most times the people that strenuously object have no real idea what the competing advertising budgets were..  I also think the argument that "Nintendo (or Sony) don't spend that much, so it must be bad!" is not a valid rebuttal but an emotional response.

So I take it I didnt through to anyone?

Where did people get this 500m figure anyways?

My mistake, the second article is much clearer.

5% of $5 billion is $250 million. It would need to be above 10% to exceed the Kinect spend. We can surmise the spending from the overall figure, but it's just pure guesswork.

Those figures are Nintendo's spending in 2008. This Kinect push was in 2010, when they did spend more than Nintendo.

There is nothing wrong with any of it, I agree. If you have the cash, push the products your selling. That's not the reason I commented. I commented because there seems to be a serious effort on this website not only to exaggerate the figure, but also to downplay it.  

So we have this "omg $500m!!!!! SO MUCH CASH!!!" and this "Yeah $500m is pretty normal no big deal" attitudes floating around. I'd like the clarify if it's one or the other, or perhaps a happy medium, with all the avialable information.

Sony seems to spend more than I would ever have imagined pushing their products. I'd be very interested to know how much of that goes towards the PS division. In the space of two years Nintendo looks like they cut their advertising spend in half.

Are spending that much to advertising a price drop before launch?

Sorry for the failed math, I must have needed my meds that day.  Regardless, I think you and I agree on a lot here, I think the perspectives we came from may have been different (I seem to always here "500 million - thats way too much M$ sucks" and you hear "500 million is nothing and spent across a whole year!") but I think we've arrived at the same place.

As for Nintendo you are of course right that my quote was for 2008 vs 2010, but I think those are much more reasonable comparisons, as in 2008 the DS/Wii were newer products and would have required more marketing, just as the completely new Kinect would in 2010.

I have a ton of Sony products that I really enjoy.  I have bought an older PS3 (60 GB) and then sold that and bought a slim PS3, so I'm no stranger to the quality that Sony provides.  However the "Sony is an altruistic company who loves their customers and would never do anything wrong" garbage that is often spouted on these boards turns my stomach.  If anyone prefers the PS3 to the 360 or Wii, that is a perfectly reasonable, and rationale personal choice.  When they try to back up that subjective preference with falsely created "objective" facts to try to rationalize it, well that is nonsense.

Anyway, I apologize for the rant and please note, it was not aimed at you.

They're going to need a big advertisement, especially here in the states. I haven't seen any T.V. ads for it yet. I guess things won't kick off until Feb. I'll still wait a year to get it. Hopefully by the the price will have dropped and there will be some nice bundles to go with the system.

Nintendo spent (I think the figure is $1.17 billion with the exchange rate at the time) pushing the Wii and DS in 2008. A few years after launch (3-4 years for the DS and 2 years for the Wii.) That's actually gigantic, and puts the $500m figure a bit into perspective. I guess what surprised me most about the figure was that it was spent pushing a peripheral, possibly over the course of only a few months, and that MS with one stroke had spent more with one campaign than Nintendo did in a year pushing two devices.

I guess my conclusion is the figure definitely isn't as outragous as some would lead you to believe, but it's by no means small either. I mean it's comparable to the spending of the industry leader during a period of massive growth- the heyday of the Wii and DS. Hats off to MS, they had confidence in their product and made sure it got a ton of exposure.

"Sony is an altruistic company who loves their customers and would never do anything wrong"

This unfortunetly is not a view shared by just Sony fans alone. Many Nintendo fans echo the same sentiment about their beloved company. MS fans actually don't seem to be in the same boat, probably because the history isn't there yet, many of the fanbase have been different console owners in the past or the image MS conveys is different. Your quote exists though because of the level of attachment many members of this website have with their consoles, and the companies behind them. I totally agree with you about the falsely created objective facts. I'd love to stomp out the propagation of misinformation. It seems to be everywhere these days.

Anyway, I fear I've ended up giving you and even longer rant to read. :P

i think the psp vita will be a flop, i used to love the psp but they been falling off