Attendees at a Microsoft company meeting in Germany have apparently leaked a presentation to WinFuture.de and revealed that Microsoft will be supporting the launch of Windows 8 with $500 million for advertising and marketing.
The number was not officially mentioned, but the company noted that its marketing budget would be 167 percent of the budget that was made available for Windows 7 - which was about $300 million. Additionally, the presentation also confirmed that Windows 8 is nearly completed and is scheduled to be released to manufacturing by the end of this month.
Microsoft officially announced today that the OS will hit RTM in the first week of August. However, if Microsoft sticks to the schedule outlined in the information given to WinFuture.de, we might be seeing Windows 8 RTM announced almost exactly three years after Windows 7 RTM, which Microsoft announced on July 22, 2009.