http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=136476

It's all about marketing, and Disney is a monster when it comes to selling.

Disney, Chevrolet, Sprint and T-Mobile are banking on Microsoft Xbox 360 and controller-free games through Kinect to connect with video game players.

Disney Pictures signed a deal with Microsoft to promote its movie "Tron," scheduled for release in December, through the Xbox Live network and Kinect hub. The campaign, which begins in November, will feature either a long-form theatrical clip or a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie, Sean Alexander, director of interactive entertainment at Microsoft, told MediaPost. The details are still being worked out.

It will be a huge success when it actually recieves good games!!

Sounds good. I'm happy to see such major sponsors have jumped on bored.

Lucky you! They start rolling out November 4th.

I wonder how much these companies pay MS for those kind of ads.

Anybody here in the marketing business who can give us an educated guess?

Yeah, it will probably be huge and give a big boost to xbox360 sales. As for the good games part , for what kinect does (casual, silly , fun games) i think it has by far the best games . Games like kinect sports and kinect adventures look miles ahead from the offerings of the other motion-based solutions . I don't want to play a new Halo on kinect , or any other motion-based vontrol method , i want silly, hillarious games like kinect adventures.

i predict kinect will be a huge success from day one. many will rush out and buy it.

what is kinect hub ?

also, it is not ads for kinect, it is ads for others brands right ?

Well the fact that even my pastor included Kinect in his sermon means its gonna be a big deal. The last time he included stuff was the Wii and Avatar. But I don't think it will be Wii huge if the current glitches aren't fixed by the launch date. Delays in actions and not being able to sit down will both hurt the Kinect in the long run.

If Kinect is fixed by launch date then I expect it to sell really well. But in the end it will be word of mouth that sells Kinect. Also ever realized Microsoft likes to whore itself out trying to sell ad space to everyone. They were talking in game ads alittle while ago.

I'm studying Marketing at Uni if that helps (it probably won't).

After reading the article, it seems more like partnerships are being created instead of other companies just buying ad space. I'm sure money changed hands at one point, but I'm guessing that companies like Disney and Chevy are making exclusive offers and Microsoft is offering them a platform to promote themselves in return. It's a good strategy and it's pretty interesting that it's reaching out to non game related companies, its usually contrived to media services (Netflix, Hulu) or just publisher deals (Activision with Microsoft, EA with Sony).