KINECT is NOT selling because of $500 Million Ad Budget

[thx1139]

Squilliam said:

superchunk said:

Wrong.

The initial sales, i.e. Nov/Dec, are directly attributed to the massive advertising campaign.

The sales of 2011 and beyond (don't know why you think it will be around for "decades") will be based on word of mouth, which I agree is been very positive.

No, the marketing campaign included live demonstration. So many of the people who bought it week 1 tried it weeks previous to that. If it takes all of a week for a game to turn from hyped into flop because word of mouth travels even quicker with Facebook, txting, email etc today then it would have taken all of a week for Kinect to flop. The rest of the sales beyond the first week given the first week sales were a combination of hype/tried it can be considered educated purchases. Quite frankly the number of people who just bought it because it was on TV is so small as to be not worth talking about.

Would add that the marketing started right after E3 with the Kinect demo stations all over the country. Remember MS had Kinect in Alpha and Beta form available for people to try at MS Stores, Macy's, traveling roadshows and special events (state fairs, etc.). MS was pretty confident the impressions would be good and they were right.