PS4 doing "exclusive" marketing for SF5. what can MS do with KI S3

[TheNinjaOstrich]

If we get a KI commercial during the Superbowl, then we’ve made it.

[Iago407]

@BigBadAndy

It’s likely we will see a marketing push with S3 and the PC release. What kind of push remains to be seen. I doubt we will see the type of bus ads like the ones I saw for MKX in Paris last year. Again, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. KI isn’t on store shelves and they aren’t trying to move 4 million units at launch to justify the five year development cycle and pay for work to begin on the next game. Unlike with SFV there are no retail partners with exclusive preorder bonuses or any reason to have in store advertisements for the game. So a lot of the “rules” for marketing a digital only yet still major release have not really been written yet. I just don’t know enough to say that it would make sense to run KI tv commercials during the SuperBowl.

I think that point is key. The fact that it’s not on store shelves likely makes it a little trickier to do a traditional marketing campaign. Sure, there are some mobile game commercials out there that do just fine with it, but a download only console game feels like more uncharted territory in that regard, especially one that’s been on the market since late 2013.

I would like to see a commercial, if for no other reason than to put something up against PS4’s marketing of Street Fighter V, but even in saying that, I realize that’s not a very good reason to spend the money on a commercial. The “they’re getting more press so we should get more press too” approach doesn’t seem all that logical when you consider what Street Figher is, how much Sony paid for it and the overall brand recognition versus KI.

I tend to think that many KI fans, myself included, would see more traditional marketing as a show of support for the game, or a way of saying “this is what we have to compete with SF. This is our game.” But even then, is that really enough to justify spending the money when they’re already marketing KI in several other ways and anyone anywhere near the FGC already knows that KI is MS’ fighting game?

At the end of the day, MS is a business with a bottom line, so while I’d love to say “yeah, do more; bus ads, commercials, internet ads, I want to see this game everywhere because it lets me know that you guys are behind it and promoting it and we need as many fans as possible on team KI,” if that’s not a cost effective strategy for a download only title entering it’s 3rd season, then they won’t do it and it’s hard to blame them, even if the other side has a big new exclusive that they want to show off in the same genre.

@MBABanemobius

You have to consider the way MS markets things too. Looking at the recent Halo 5 and Tomb Raider commercials over, you need to have terrible sound mixing including a pop song, no in game footage, and not much going on in the advert which is to do with the game. KI trailers so far have had in game footage, in game music and good sound mixing, so are completely inadequate as an MS sponsored advert.

Yeah, I’m trying to picture what a KI commercial would even look like. It’s not as if there’s a ton of beautiful, big budget, almost movie-like scenes in KI, and if you tried to make a typical MS commercial with footage like that, I think it’d be very different from KI’s look, probably to the point of being misleading.

Of course, they could always go a different route and just, ya know… Show the game. Maybe have the pulsing logo from the first E3, maybe some voiceover about “the legend continues” or whatever and show a brief montage of character intros for characters in season 3, some snippets of cool moves and crazy combos and the ending of an Ultra with the announcer yelling that word with an immediate cut to an Xbox logo and “Download Season 3: Coming March __”

I think something like that could go against the typical giant budget looking commercials, maybe with a more viral campaign look to it. I think it could work. The question is how effective that would be over what they’re already doing.

[BigBadAndy]

@Iago407

I tend to think that many KI fans, myself included, would see more traditional marketing as a show of support for the game, or a way of saying “this is what we have to compete with SF. This is our game.” But even then, is that really enough to justify spending the money when they’re already marketing KI in several other ways and anyone anywhere near the FGC already knows that KI is MS’ fighting game?

I couldn’t agree more. It would be very difficult to go into a meeting with the marketing team and say “but we owe it to the fans to run tv ads.” Not only will they laugh you out of the room, upper management is going to agree with them. And frankly, so would any rational person. But most of the folks on this board are thinking about PR for KI as if it was for the benefit of the existing player base.

Marketing is hard. It’s hard to say “if we run this ad, we will generate xx amount of revenue.” And it’s hard to measure the impact after the fact. What is less hard it to recognize that advertising is intended to reach a new audience - not lead to high fives from the existing one. Chances are if they had an effective advertising campaign, people on this board would hate it.

[JINXHAND]

Not to necro-bump this thread, I didn’t want to create a separate thread just for this question regarding marketing.

Is there any chance that these advertisements can be used on twitch.tv? I frequent many channels in which I often see advertisements for other games. Why not utilize the KI trailers and trailers for KIWC on this medium?

If this is already happening, then please pardon the interruption. I simply do not see anything marketing KI on twitch or even U-stream. I barely see KI ads on youtube, and they’re few and far in between.

[Blade4693]

I would just say random picture ads on gaming sites, and maybe some of those little youtube commercial ads you get before videos start. Make it so anyone who is watching fighting game related video on youtube catches a glimpse of the new KI.

[JINXHAND]

That’s all I’m asking tbh. I see tons of ads for SFV, MKXL, and even some random indie fighters from time to time. IG has backing from Microsoft, so why can’t they support them as such. That isn’t to say IG isn’t getting support, I just think they’re not getting it in other equally important areas of the game.