Yes!!! With this logic, I can do anything!!!

I could easily sell anything I want at half the cost because my product is better!!!

Microsoft doesn't "have" to spend that money.  They already make bank on the existing sales.  You put in money to get money, and you invest in things that show a lot of possibilities for growth.  If you believe the product will do well, then you invest in it.  Show me a product that has made more money than it's competitors and didn't have as much commercial time as it's competitiors in it's infancy.

What comes to mind?  Minecraft?  That's about it.  When something actually makes it to a commercial (or into commercialization), it means that it has gone under rigorous analyzing and has been seen as well worth the cost (when speaking of commercializaiton on a national scale, local economy's differ when it comes to this idea).

I have a feeling your going to understand this as much as euphoria.  So, to make it more simple, let's wait 1 week, yeah, 1 week, and tell me what you think about kinect sales.

That's my asessment as well.  Most of the Sony / Move supporters here aren't trying to say it's a huge smashing success.  I think all the people trying to spin things as bad (like taking pictures at retailers) are trying to convince themselves that it's less of a success than it really is.  It's not convincing the people that are giving Sony it's deserved credit.  I even think the Wii Motion is still the best as far as motion control is concerned - due to it's convenience in working in any lighting / room situation. 

Never underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance.  It's the underlying psychology to all these system wars.

minecraft is a very recent example, but to goto an older one, we could look at google.  google beat out all its competitors and had very limited advertising.  one of the reason that on of their top competitor (yahoo) even survived was because they owned a lot of google stock, before its ipo, which skyrocketed afterwards

another company that doesnt advertise much (if at all) is berkshire hathoway and theyve been doing pretty darn well.  theres a saying that good product doesnt need to be advertised, and i think google points that out the most.  im not going to argue that advertisement cant help a product, but it certainly isnt necessary for success

i also dont think facebook advertised much either, but im not sure

So would the logic go, if google had any advertisement (which it never will) and it was the same product, recieving the same support from it's personal customer advertisement, would google be more successful?

And google is free I might add.  They recieve funds from companies purely, which in effect has only to do with personal consumers using the product.  I have personally never given google money.  Google has commercialized to investors, showing how they bring forth more consumer awareness, and this is why we do not see this "advertisement" because we are not personally recieving it.

berkshire hathoway?  What the heck is that?  I just checked out the official web page for it, and I have no idea what this is.  It looks like a hackers paradise.

Move is a product.  It is not something that can be slip passed as a software phenomenon.

sorry, posted twice.

As is always the case with these types of items,   What games do you realistically see being created for Kinect?   What companies do you see making these games for Kinect?   And how much support do you see Kinect receiving this late into the generation?   Software sells video games.  Without software your peripherals are meaningless.  This generation is how many year in so far and Developers still have struggled to find a good balance with the Wii and you think they are all going to just jump ship  on a product they're tremendously even more inexperienced at?  Get real.

My response to the above questions are quite simple and straight-forward.  

(What games do you realistically see being created for Kinect? )     I realistically see an absolute ton of shovelware that hardly works for the Kinect.  I don't see that out of some negative bias,  I see that because Microsoft isn't in a position to accept anything other than what's given to them.

 (What companies do you see making these games for Kinect?)     I realistically see a lot of third party companies jumping on-board if for no reason other than to be on the ball if Kinect does turn out to be huge.  But realistically the software efforts from these third-party companies, I feel will be very similar (If not worse) than the Wii because of how foreign the concept is and how it's just not worth it for them to change how they operate this late into the game.    Name the First Party Studios that Microsoft will have at their disposal?  Please.   And don't mention Rare they haven't been relevant since 1996.  It's scarily thin.  So where will the reliance on Kinect software fall?  Yup, you guessed it those third-parties.

how much support do you see Kinect receiving this late into the generation? 

Full, verbal support.  Minimal actual support.  This needs time for software to actually be developed for it.  It's not going to happen over-night and even then there is some serious questions on if software created for it will actually be fun or if it will resemble a more advanced Eye Toy.

The Kinect is priced about as high as a new console will cost you.  It really has no games worth mentioning at launch.  Microsoft has protected it from criticism / skeptics / etc for quite some time now.  It's had multiple features mentioned now removed, it's been turned from Hardware Implementation to a Software one (A bad sign IMO),  Questions about how well it will work have arose (Sitting / Lighting conditions/ Can it detect subtle movements / etc), As far as I know games aren't going to be especially cheap on the system.   The very first 'game' that got people interested in the product in the first place has basically turned out to be vaporware.   Most if not all of the footage shown at big press conferences has been completely staged.

I really belive Kinect will become this generations, SegaCD.   Which mind you was also touted as a "New console".  The similarities between the two are astounding. 

You failed to grasp the point. They certainly spent so much because they felt they had too. As example, since you want one, Kinect will probably never sell more than Wii. But Nintendo didnt spend so much on marketing. Why you ask. Because Nintendo was confident their product would work without investing that much in marketing.

Theres could be literally hundreads of examples since no company spend that much marketing for one product. 500 millions, dont you realise thats enormous.

Good examples there, they could have spent more on marketing and get success more rapidly but it wasnt needed.

Yes, I do realize how much that is.

And you fail to see me making fun of your point.  Which means I understood your point, and tried to say that Microsoft doesn't need to advertise it, but they want to.  They feel, and so do their investors, that Kinect will pay for it self in the long run.  And just an F.Y.I, 500 million is how much Microsoft spent on the original Xbox 360 advertisement.  So there goes that theory that no one does that.

Nintendo didn't invest cause they didn't feel they had to?  Please.  Look at their profits before the Wii.  They are a fraction of what the Wii was, and Nintendo had no idea what was going to happen.  No one did.

The Kinect will sell like a hot cake.  We have 2 days and counting till the madness of seeing no Kinect available in store.  With that kind of purchasing power taking place, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft put more money into advertisement, because chances are high that the profit ratio for the Kinect is 2:1, seeing as the console itself using 5 year old technology (soong to be 6), and the Kinect is probably worth an actual $80 before sale.  And with a price cut this coming spring (look a analysts projections of the Kinect dropping to $99, making the bundle 249), things will be insane for M$.

I actually think that the 360 will go down to $199 with it's Kinect Bundle, cause the console itself can take a price cut and so can the Kinect.  $99 for a Kinect, $149 for the 360 (arcade edition).  But that's just looking at how the 360 uses cheap techonology (with today's standards).  With that, Microsoft could easily out pass everyone because they would most likely charge 199 for the Kinect bundle.  If M$ does this, the Wii won't exists, and the PS3 most likely won't be effected.

My personal feeling on the whole thing.