For the record, that $500 mil is for the year, not for the holiday.  Its also not an unusual marketing number.

Also, I think we may just have different views of what is a game changer.  As the article states, alone it looks to generate some $2 bil in revenue.  People are having a blast with it, developers are excited to do cool and unique things with it, hackers are already getting creative with it and its been out for a little over a month.  

While I agree that I can't predict the future, but I guess its getting old to hear people fighting the trend.  Back in 2009, Project Natal excited the world with its potential.  Throughout 2010, it was highly anticipated and launch sales were predicted to be quite impressive.  So it launches and sells even BETTER than anticipated and demand continues through the holidays.  For people to believe and promote the possibility that demand will disappear after the holidays and this will be a 2 month fad, despite industry professionals and analysts clearly saying the opposite, gets a bit irritating here on this of all sites.  

Kinect is trending very, very well and there are no signs AT ALL that it will slow down signficantly, so why even dwell so much on something that is so unlikely?  I just don't understand ...

$500m is for the product launch,altough not jst for holidays itself,it is just for launch still.we don't know if its an yea or not.even then its big and the fact that MS will drop most of that on US itself,so you have a big marketing and that too just for few countries(i am saying this based upon the xbox strongholds like US,UK)

don't get me wrong.i am not saying that people aren't enjoying,devs aren't interested and hackers aren't doing amazing stuff.they are and i fully believe that.

about sales,i didn't mean to say it will vanish after holidays.i didn't say anything about how it will perform.I am just saying that after one year we will know how it effected at different periods of year and how sales increased and decreased.thats all.

game changer atleast when discussing in gaming terms and sales term would be that kinect is so big a hit that 360 HW sales increase throughout the year and defeat the competitors(yearly from now on) and become the new definition like Wii did which we will find out in an year.i didn't know you were talking game changer in utility terms.

It's for up to 2012. And it's less than Sony or Nintendo have spent this year on advertising their consoles (Kowen found proof, not sure which one) so it isn't actually all that much.