A few weeks ago, we ran story on how the troubled the Xbox Kinect is and now, other sites are reporting on the troubles behind the scenes of Redmond. Now we have news that Sony had sold 1.5 million Move units in Europe and another 1 million in the States, putting it in a strong position for the upcoming holiday season. On the other hand, Microsoft seems to have a half-functional device on their hands that needs to have the most optimal settings to give you even minimal playability. How do the folks at Redmond respond to this?

With a $500 million advertising campaign, centered around the Kinect. Yes, Microsoft wants to spend $500 million this year to promote the Kinect. Partners like “Burger King, Pepsi, YouTube, Nickelodeon, Disney, Glee, Dancing with the Stars, People and InStyle magazines, and even Times Square” will all having a role to play in spreading the word. The last time Microsoft spent $500 million was to fight off the impressions and hide how troubled Windows Vista was. Now, with another broken product, Microsoft does what it’s best at: spending a ton of cash to convince people. Apple really said it best.

To be fair, at the same time, if Sony had the money, I’m sure they would spend it as well. Too many times this generation, because of lack of funding and advertising vision, Sony releases another fantastic product, like the Playstation Move, and not enough awareness is around it. Compared to prior years, Sony has indeed done considerably better and Sony themselves has said that the Playstation Move will be more of a word of mouth product. But, with companies like Apple and Microsoft having the budget to actually educate and promote their product, it’s sad to see Sony not be able to compete, even though they have a fantastic product on their hands.