You just do not understand Microsoft’s strategy
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^^
This just invites more console war talk lol.
Some of us are trying to have a productive discussion on this, I’d rather not get grouped in with this.
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Serious question: Why wouldn’t traditional (or any) marketing work for Xbox specifically?
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Xbox and MS are heavy in analytics and sees what works for them and how much return they get, also, traditional marketing probably won’t work in markets that have already decided they don’t want an xbox console.
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They do do marketing. To say otherwise is disingenuous, and clearly it works given the spike in player numbers for first party games.
I’m not saying traditional marketing definitely won’t work for MS. I’m saying that it might be too expensive for how much effect it would have. Only MS knows what works and what doesn’t because they can see the data, so if they are choosing to not invest their money in traditional marketing, it stands to reason that it’s probably not as effective in 2023 as it was in 2007.
That being said, I do think they will engage in traditional marketing when games like Starfield are coming out. But doing it for Grounded or Pentiment, as great as those games are, would be a waste of money.
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I just like MS to try and promote their console. I see little of them doing it of late. It just seems to me they’re not going to bother and try anything until Starfield is ready.
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They don’t have enough Series X to do any traditional marketing and the Series S probably sells itself to the people who want to buy it.
They need to reach critical mass of word of mouth and public interest. Spending all their money in April when not much is going on doesn’t sell consoles.
Promoting GAMES like Redfall (which they are doing), Starfield and Forza when they are coming out (and the June 11th showcases) does sell consoles.
Talking bout AAA exclusives bro.
I’m sure it will be the best most fastest selling Playstation game of all time…and still be beaten by CoD, Diablo, Starfield and Zelda, probably 2 or 3 times over.
I expect a lot of “you can’t compare a $70 game to a game pass release” post launch.
OH.
Only because its Free on Xbox consoles to 30 million gamers. I don’t expect Diablo to sell well at all on Xbox…but I expect thats where the playerbase will be.
I’d rather Xbox become renowned for having games that 50 million people play at launch week, then coast on reputation with a drought.
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It would work, I think it’s silly to say otherwise.
The issue is, Xbox hasn’t been releasing games that would lend itself to a traditional marketing blitz.
I believe we’ll see a vast difference in how they market Forza/Halo vs Starfield, Hellblade & Fable.
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Not a single Sony game has been played by 50 million people.
Edit: I would also bet that not a single first party Xbox 360 game was played by 50 million people.
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Forza Horizon 5 is on track to do that by end of year
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Hm, I’m not sure leaving the field wide open for PS to dominate markets like Europe is working out well either.
It’s not really only about selling consoles either, I still have to explain to people what Game Pass is and that is supposedly where their focus lie.
I also think things will change when the big games come more regularly. Redfall and Starfield are both Bethesda games too, and they are much better at marketing so that should be good.
As for MS knows what they are doing, their data said doubling the price of Gold would be a good idea so yeah… I don’t have the same faith in their all-knowing analysis capabilities as some seem to have lol.
The things Sony does are marketing their consoles, brand or third party games hard when there are no big first party games. It seems to work, and since I still have to explain Game Pass I would argue that is an area Xbox could do more in.
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I like to know why SONY feel the need to push their console on TV and the likes of Youtube, despite a 7 million userbase advantage and smashing Xbox sales the last couple of months in the UK and USA.
I would have thought its MS who would need to do more, rather than SONY
Never will at this point. I can see Diablo 4, Forza Horizon 6, Starfield, Elder Scrolls, every CoD post game pass launch and anything else Blizzard makes, easily doing it. And a dozen others hitting 40m…and even more hitting 30m.
Playstation exclusives tend to top out at 20m with PC and a lot of bundling after many, many many years…and when you’re a console whos identity revolves around CoD - and that relationship is ending - and your exclusives which are getting annihilated (in popularity) by Nintendo and Xbox thats a big problem. One that money can’t fix.
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Sony could entirely stop doing any and all TV Ads and they would still get the hardware and game sales.
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And yet they market and push their system, while MS who are millions of units behind and in the last few months a distant 3rd in hardware sales in the USA, UK, EU, just do nothing.
No wonder SONY is winning
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“No wonder Sony can’t afford to acquire publishers” is what one could say about them burning their money with legacy marketing channels.
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Xbox marketing = “its on game pass”
Crazy thing is it works.
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Feels like some people just want xbox to blow their budget on random billboards so they “feel” the marketing
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