Tag Archives: marketing

Creative Minx Marketing have buddied up with Konami to handle licensing and retail programs for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

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Ubisoft wants that Christmas number one spot. The publisher has set aside over £4 million for its Assassin’s Creed 3 ad campaign, the biggest marketing spend in the company’s history.

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Natural Motion CEO Torsten Reil is of the opinion marketing and PR campaigns don’t have an impact on the number of downloads a mobile game attains. Speaking with GI International during Game Horizon, Reil said: “We learnt the hard way that we really needed to rethink marketing. I don’t think it works at all,” Reil said. “The download numbers that you’re dealing with overall are so huge that any PR downloads that you create are just noise.” According to Reil, there are better ways to get users to click on and download apps, and used My Horse as an example of eye catching design which let to over 11 million downloads. We reckon 90% were females, because, you know, girls love horses. Thanks, GI International.

The Game Marketing Summit has handed the award for Game Marketing Agency of the Year to AKQA, which is the advertising partner of Bethesda. The studio handled the advertising for Skyrim. Campaign of the Year was handed over for Skyrim as well, and RAGE won Best Use of Sound, Best Website for a Product, Best Online Advertising Campaign. EA won for Best Partnership with ESPN, Ubisoft was handed the award for Outstanding Overall Marketing Campaign – General Entertainment for Rocksmith, and Activision took home an award for Most Effective Buzz Marketing: Promotion due to its Call of Duty XP advertising. Thanks, GI International.

BioWare is throwing quite the party to celebrate tonight’s US launch of Mass Effect 3, with appearances from voice actors and developers as well as an intriguing AR game.

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A new survey from Microsoft’s advertising arm has concluded that Xbox 360 owners in the UK spend, on average, £64 a month on games.

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Microsoft said today it’s to spend around $1 billion marketing Kinect and Windows Mobile 7, with about half the figure going to the former.

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Hideki Konno, head of Nintendo’s EAD Software Development Group No. 1, has said marketing 3DS will be “very tricky” for the firm.

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Blizzard Entertainment Korea has announced a co-marketing plan with Korean Air for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which will see character Jim Raynor’s image wrapped on two planes belonging to the airline.

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2K’s vice president of marketing, Matt Gorman, and marketing director Tom Bass, stated during an interview that because of the massive success of BioShock, the team felt pressure trying to convince the public it needed to revisit Rapture.

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According to a report over on MCV, when Natal is launched on the market, Microsoft plans to use celebrity endorsements along the same lines Nintendo used with DS.

You know- those commercials with Beyonce and Lisa Kudrow?

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PixelJunk Racers and Monsters director Rhod Broadbent has spoken out against current promotion methods, saying the norm is to aim at accruing sales from “the people who read NeoGAF”.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revealed to the US Congress that the games industry does a better job with responsible marketing than any other form of entertainment advertisement.

Different aspects cited were the large noticeable ratings on packaging, M-rated game ads not being shown before 10pm, and most notable is the fact that 80 percent of retailers are diligent about not selling mature games to minors and “little evidence” exists for inappropriate target marketing.

“The computer and videogame industry leads all others in ensuring its products are marketed appropriately and is the gold standard for others to follow,” said ESA president and CEO Michael D Gallagher.

“Today’s FTC report is a strong acknowledgement and validation that industry-led self-regulation efforts are the best way to provide parents and retailers with the resources and support they need to keep our kids’ entertainment experiences suitable.”

Take that “He Who Shall Not Be Named”.

Via GI.biz.

Nintendo UK has started pushing its online multiplayer games via an eight-week marketing campaign on the official website.

Called ‘Get it Online’, the campaign heavily promotes the online capabilities of Wii through a banner. When clicked, the visitor is taken to a series of 16 different videos touting Wii’s various features and explaining how to get online through the console.

According to Edge, loads of of multiplayer footage is featured in the spots along with the Wii Shop, web browser, and visitors to the site can submit their mobile number so they can watch the videos on their cell.

The purpose of the campaign is to become more competitive in the online market. Xbox Live is predicted to rake-in $1 billion (£680 million) in subscription fees by 2013, according to research firm In-Stat.

Sony’s developer relations manager has said that self-publishers should start marketing games early on, even before the game is finished.

Speaking with GI.biz during GDC, Chris Eden admitted that the first self-published titles for PSN had little to no marketing and suffered as a result.

“One thing we’ve learnt with the first batch of self-published titles is that marketing has often been overlooked,” said Eden.

“Too many developers have got into the mentality of, ‘We’ll finish the game, and then we’ll start the marketing.’ That is way too late.

“You really need to start your marketing efforts at the minimum of two months out from release.

Using the PlayStation Blog as an example, Eden said that it has become “wildly popular,” accumulating over 1.3 million page views per week with 40,000 users subscribed to its RSS feeds.

“Consumers love being able to interact with developers,” he said.

Hit the link for more.

Murray Pannell has left Microsoft to join Ubisoft UK as marketing director.

Pannell spent six years at Microsoft as group product manager for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows.

He replaces Jon Rosenblatt, who’s just left for EA Sports.

Congrats, Murray. Thanks, MCV.

Bethesda has hired Sarah Seaby as its new European marketing and PR director.

Seaby started out with Interplay, and eventually went on to work for Gamecock, Virgin Interactive, Take Two and worked a consultancy role with Sega, working on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.

“Sarah’s vast experience of marketing triple-A titles and her affinity to the people who actually make the games ensure she is an ideal fit for Bethesda,” said a Bethesda spokesman.

Seaby’s new responsibility at the firm will be developing the overall brand strategy.

Speaking to MCV, Microsoft UK boss Neil Thompson has said the firm’s marketing spend for 360 at the end of the year’s going to be major stuff.

“On marketing we’ll spend tens of millions – we’re going to engage in a very bold promotional push from now until Christmas,” he said.

Thompson added: “We think that for high definition entertainment Xbox is first choice.

“We’ve been talking to all of our retail partners about what we’re doing at Christmas and we’ve been very bold and ambitious about how successful we think we can be.”

More through the link.

Speaking in an earnings call following the release of Q3 financials last night, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said that old GTA titles have sold in seven figure units for the quarter.

“More than one million units of previous GTA titles were sold in the third quarter of fiscal 2008 alone,” said the exec.

“Based on GTA IV sales to date… we believe the lifetime Grand Theft Auto sales will ultimately track well ahead of any previous Grand Theft Auto titles.”

GTA IV, the publisher confirmed last night, has now sold more than 10 million units, and it to be pushed through the Christmas season by a new Rockstar PR and marketing campaign.

Read all the rest of our news from the financial release here.

In Take-Two’s third-quarter earnings call last night, CEO Ben Feder said that Rockstar is planning a new Christmas push for GTA IV.

“Rockstar is launching a new marketing and PR campaign which will start in the fall and extend into the Holiday season,” said the exec.

“Also as a must-have game for all fans of interactive entertainment, GTA IV we believe should receive a boost from the ramp up in hardware sales during the upcoming Holiday season.”

Feder said that Take-Two’s partner support for the game will extend through to 2009.

“In addition our hardware partners continue to be excited about the title and are planning to support GTA IV in a major way through early next year,” he added.

“The Japanese version of Grand Theft Auto IV is set for release on October 30th and the PC version is due out in November, both of which will open new chapters in the phenomenal performance of the game.”

Chairman Strauss Zelnick said he believed Christmas would be kind to the game.

“We’re comfortable where our inventory levels are and we’re comfortable that going into the fall and Holiday season that sales of GTA IV will pick up,” he said.

Take-Two confirmed last night that total sales of the action smash have moved through the 10 million unit mark.

Read all our news from the financial release here.