Halo is not COD.
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BTW CrossfireX is near release and it’s still MIA from socials and advertising, that game is gonna bomb hard if no GP at this point.
I know it’s more on Smilegate, but for example their other game near release, Lost Ark published by Amazon is being heavily advertized. Hmmm
It probably sucks lol
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Then I truly wonder if actual Remedy from Alan Wake, QB, Control made this. There was one previewer that said some stuff was straight from Sam Lake but he probably meant that he thought that.
Not everyone likes QB and Control but they ARE quality games nonetheless. This is a shame.
Watching the GamingBolt video for Crossfire X, it seems like the campaign will have two operations at launch with an unknown amount of missions in each operation. No info on if this is the entire campaign or not.
And it seems that Lost Ark is already successful in South Korea and its worldwide release is already being highly anticipated. Amazon has arrived with everything in the industry!
I’m gonna guess it’s a full campaign, but that’s the thing too, we just don’t know. Their marketing for it is pretty, pretty, pretty shit.
There is marketing for it?
Saw this article. Xbox has tremendous work to be done if they want to be more international like Sony (or Nintendo). Although you may argue that India is a very small console market (more mobile & PC) but still interesting to see they don’t even have a single full-time Xbox employee in the country.
Microsoft India has zero full-time employees on Xbox
While Microsoft does have a huge India presence, it doesn’t have a single employee dedicated to Xbox or gaming. Rather, those in its consumer division step in where needed. End result: Indians are served with late marketing efforts for games like Age of Empires 4 (over two months post-launch) while marquee titles like Halo Infinite are nowhere to be seen.
In fact, outside of a small burst of activity around the Xbox Series X and S release in 2020, the company has remained largely silent. Instead it relies on fans in contact with Redmond through its ambassador program to push information on Twitter rather than utilise its own official Xbox India Twitter account to “see demand”. A far cry from its earlier days.
Microsoft’s distribution is broken
Redington is Microsoft’s India distributor for Xbox. It decides which stores can sell Xbox Series X|S consoles, accessories, and games. A long-time fixture in the space, it has taken to giving preferential treatment to a handful of stores close to its headquarters in Chennai. These in turn scalp Xbox Series X consoles rather than sell at the stipulated market price.
For what its worth, the Xbox Series X is supposed to retail for Rs. 50,000 (with a 10 percent margin) but they sell for Rs. 70,000 or more. Some in the supply chain go as far to allege that Redington staffers get kickbacks on these deals and look the other way when Xbox first-party games like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 get re-exported to other countries (made possible with a close to 40 percent margin for games, the standard from others is usually 18 to 20 percent). All of this makes it near impossible for gamers to buy an Xbox console in India at a fair price. This approach hurts the Xbox brand and is partially responsible, along with non-existent marketing, for dismal sales in India.
(…)
Activision’s ignorance of retail hurts Call of Duty
Activision doesn’t have an India presence at all. In fact, the company dragged its heels with choosing a new distributor leading to Call of Duty: Vanguard not releasing in India officially. Keep in mind that India is still a market where around 70 percent of all game sales are on disc rather than digital. Sources in the supply chain tell me that some employees at the company are still fiercely loyal to the previous India distributor, Worldwide CD ROMs and have blocked all attempts at deciding on successor.
End result: Indians had to resort to buying the game via the grey market or parallel imports. While week 1 sales were strong at 15,000, total sales at retail have hit around 20,000 at best right now — two months post-launch. The reason for the slowdown is attributed to the higher purchase prices for the game from the usual import markets like the UAE and a lack of visibility on-ground versus past entries in the series. Warzone being free doesn’t help either.
Blizzard was interested in India too late
Even the Blizzard side of things are equally lethargic with Overwatch hitting the nation over a year after its worldwide release date, resulting in slow sales for most it’s time on the shelves. Approximately 5,000 copies of the game sold between PS4, Xbox One, and PC as per multiple retailers and that too, mainly through stock liquidation schemes. The situation with Diablo and World of Warcraft was equally abysmal. Overall, Rs. 5,000,000 worth of Blizzard games made it to India, and very little of it sold well enough to justify further effort in the market.
Both companies aren’t really interested — or care — about growing the market outside of traditional stomping grounds like the US and UK and there isn’t any shareholder pressure to bother either. Unless something drastically changes at Microsoft, it’s hard to see it making major inroads in India with the addition of Activision Blizzard to its roster.
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So tl;dr once again is xbox is highly mediocre at marketing in anything thats not Anglocentric, the americas and their effort to get onto Japan.
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Their marketing definitely sucks. I’m waiting on reviews. If it’s episodic, it’s gone for me and if it’s not good, it’s gone. lol
It doesn’t surprise me at all, they even struggle to market in western democracies like EU and old US allies like Japan, go figures in emergent markets like India. XD
Activision is not a much more outside-looking company, their popularity in Asia is mostly related to Blizzard pc heritage and King mobile games.
Maybe marketing will get better now cuz it will be under Xbox proper again?
Only time will tell.
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Jez said he has tons of release windows for games that he needs to get out.
Said 2022 is kinda dry.
Back to the drought it is
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We didn’t need Jez to know that, AB news was like water in the desert of new 1st party releases. XD
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