Promoting your brand for long-term positive perception is more important than promoting current products by far. 

Pretty much this.  It is a commercial to raise awareness and boost brand name.

As for 8m, that isnt much for MSFT.

Exactly, this is about brand recognition. Promoting technology that helps people while associating it with the company is a perfectly played move.

Though I get what you're saying, I think in that sense you can justify any ad, no matter how bad it is. I personally thought it wasn't a good investment. It simply wasn't a good enough ad. Apple, on the other hand, has some amazing ads for their brand (though I stll refuse to buy anything apple related). 

lol you do realize you are saying that Microsofts ad was worse than Apples because Apple showed off their products, but at the same time you wouldn't buy anything with the Apple brand on it because you associate that brand with bad stuff in general? :D

Maybe Apple should have just had a minute long advert were they showed some of the child workers at foxconn getting their Pay tokens or a crowd of hipsters all gathered around an Macbook Air, the things most people think of when you see the brand logo of Apple.

Very good commercial, for the Microsoft brand in general.

Great commercial.

Man, what happened to the memorable Superbowl commercials? And this isn't just directed at MS. It seems that everyone this year went with the sappy, sentimental ads. Sure they're nice, but no one is going to remember them in a week or two.

Have to admit it was a damn good commercial, even through in kinect.

Should have used kinect v2.