Game Marketing During the Transition
Posted on Monday, December 5 @ 14:44:06 Eastern
Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 two weeks ago, kicking off the next console transition. Lost amid the discussions of the technical merits of each upcoming system is the impact that the transition will have on the way we market video games.
The first few years of console transitions are traditionally challenging times for publishers as they attempt to support a small but rabid base of hardware upgraders while continuing to maximize the returns from a larger but less enthusiastic base on the older systems. During this period, publishers should re-think their marketing priorities.
During the last few years of the 2000-2005 console cycle, marketing console games became a very formulaic exercise. Publishers quickly learned the following tactics:
- Leverage simultaneous multi-platform releases: By launching a single game across multiple platforms, a publisher could make the most of sales and marketing spends and reduce redundant expenses, such as media buying and trade marketing. This also led to an added savings effect on production by standardizing feature lists across platforms and reducing the requirement to fully take advantage of system hardware.
- Use a single unified message for all SKUs: Since all versions were released simultaneously across platforms, publishers could use a single communication campaign that covered every platform. This saved the publishers money- they could create a single print campaign, a single TV campaign, and a single online campaign. They would play down or ignore the differences between versions in order to use this unified message.
- TV is the most important marketing vehicle: Because publishers could achieve these economies of scale, television campaigns made financial sense for many more of their releases. Over time, television advertising grew in status from discretionary to being a necessity. Television programs targeting the young adult male on MTV, Spike TV and Comedy Central are now supported heavily by the media dollars of game publishers.
- Build the Buzz, Launch, Move On: Virtually all of the marketing activity for a console game release occurs within a window beginning six months prior to release of the game and ending one or two months afterward. Once the game is released, the marketing team is assigned to the next product down the line.
The strategies outlined above will rapidly lose their effectiveness during the transition from the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era to the next systems. Publishers will be forced to re-think the way they build excitement about new generation games.
- Simultaneous multi-platform releases will not be feasible for the first year or two: There are two primary reasons. First, the staggered hardware launches between Xbox 360, PS3 and Revolution will initially prevent them and second, even when all of the systems are available, developers must master very different hardware architecture.
- Early adopters demand games that show off their systems: Gamers who buy the new systems when they launch are passionate about gaming and are looking for games that exploit the new systems' capabilities. For this reason, marketing new games on these systems has to be more platform specific, requiring publishers to tailor their messages more distinctively, and create content that is unique to each system.
- The new generation installed base is too small to support large scale TV campaigns. In addition, the previous generation installed based is large, but too fragmented to effectively target with TV: During the first two years of the new cycle, the number of consumers on the new hardware will remain much smaller than the base of consumers on the current systems. Since the potential consumer base will be smaller, television will be an inefficient and expensive way to reach them. Although the number of gamers on the old hardware will remain large, television campaigns aimed at them will be inefficient and expensive for a different reason -- the audience is much more fragmented and therefore less easy to target with TV. Marketing budgets will shrink, turning television advertising back into a luxury instead of a necessity.
- Games will have longer shelf-lives: During the transition, adoption growth rates will be high, but there will be fewer available titles on the shelves. This constant influx of new consumers will demand the best games on the system, even if they are older titles. Additionally, the online functionality of the new systems will allow publishers to derive revenue by adding new content to games over time. For this reason, marketing campaigns will evolve into long-term product management instead of the current "fire and forget" strategy.
- Supporting the Old Generation: The lifecycle of the PS2 and Xbox are now in their mature and declining phases, but there is still a great deal of money to be made.
Marketing new generation games requires efficiency -- making the maximum impact with a minimal investment. In this respect, publishers should take a cue from PC game marketing. PC game marketing involves more a more targeted and personal marketing approach; including targeted print and online campaigns, viral campaigns, event-based marketing and creation and support of online fanbases. Consumers want to hear more details about the games they are considering and want to know that their game has long-term play value.
Older generation games will pose challenges in different respects. Profit margins will be under assault from falling software prices and a user base that buys fewer games per year. Those consumers who do not upgrade to new systems will likely be less rabid gamers, and will respond to well-known brands and franchises. The marketing challenge will be to maximize revenues and profits in a declining sector by making the right product decisions, adjusting media spending to correspond to the decline rate, and aggressively managing pricing and retail promotions.
John Heinecke is the Managing Director of Ignited Minds Consulting, which specializes in marketing and strategy solutions for video game publishers.
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| Content on this page was provided by Action Trip and was not written by, nor does it express the opinions of the Game Revolution staff. |
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