happydolphin said:
Fair answer. For 1), I will ask you, what if Nintendo wanted to sell to a new market (older teens)? What if hugo boss wanted to market to amish people, what would they need to do to succeed? My suggestion was a) offer a product that interests said market, and b) advertise it so they know about it. No advertisement, no sale. 2) Can that be said on the launch of a new console though? The cube wasn't selling to the casual/non-gamer crowd, yet Nintendo had a brand/image change and marketted to the non-gamer/casual crowd on the launch of a new console, and, well, it worked! Isn't that possible for the older-teen market also? They don't need to be core, just older-teen. For 3), what if I told you that Halo and Gears alone, two games, were largely responsible for the intial appeal of the 360 to the older teen crowd in the first two years of the console's lifecycle? From there on, 3rd party multiplats were viable on the platform. Don't you see it possible with Metroid and another IP, and if it is, shouldn't the marketing suit that new strategy? That's the OP question. Nobody expects a constant stream of exclusives within the first two years, nobody did for the PS360, nobody will here. So pushing to that market with 1 or 2 flagships, as we've seen with the 360, is a viable strategy. However, even then, the strategy will fail if the marketing doesn't push the games accordingly. |
1) - well if nintendo wanted to sell to a new market all they need to do is make products that appeal to that market. its much easier said than done of course. your suggestion is correct, but i would say offer not one product, not two, but many so it can have good pentration and sell to that market properly
2) well selling to the non-gamer/casual is very different to selling to the adult gamer audience. its basically the blue ocean/ red ocean strategy. im pretty sure every nintendo die hard fan heard of this, but if you didnt ill give you a quick explanation to what it is. going back to my point the casual crowd was in the blue ocean part. while the more adult gamer is in the red ocean part. nintendo didnt have to fight to get the cusual crowd, but to get the adult crowd they have to compete with ms/sony. the problem with that is again brand recognition. nintendo is seen as the console for kids/teens while adults see sony/ms as the console for adults. nintendo has to 1) - change that image without alienating their current fan base. 2) provide products that appeal to adult crowd. 3) successfully market there new products to the new market they want to appeal to. which is something easier said than done, again.
3) by steady stream of high quality games i didnt mean just excluisves, i ment 3rd party games as well. 3rd party games will be the majorty of that steady stream of products. exclusives job is to differentiate a console from its competitors. it why halo and gears pushed the 360, because they were the deciding factor between it and the ps3 in its early days. they both got 3rd party games but xbox had halo and gears so people went to xbox and its why ps3 sales didnt pick up quickly until 2009 when uncharted 2, killzone2 and infamous came out.
@bolded. no, metriod doesnt have anywhere near the same appeal as halo does, and it never will. no matter how much they market it halo will still sell much better than metriod. halo is a very popular form of pop culture specially between adults and thats something no company can intentionally make or plan, it just happens. metriod wont ever be. thats why metriod and another game wont be enough to sell that console to the adult market. looking at sony they needed a huge list of exculsives directed at adults to sell there console where MS just needed halo and gears. sony had uncharted, killzone, infamous, heavy rain, god of war, gran turismo, MLB, motorstorm, metal gear 4 and resistance to get that market pentration add to that that there reputation and brand recoginition is very popular between the adult gamer market.
i completly agree with you, marketing is a VERY important part of a game selling, but metriod didnt sell much not because of marketing, but because of who they were marketing it to
