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| Angelus said: Also, I think a shadow drop for Starfield, however likely (or unlikely) it may be, would be a totally reasonable strategy. Sure, because it's the biggest game that MS has coming out all year, and probably for some time, you would naturally assume that it will get the biggest marketing build up ever, but the simple truth of the matter is that's not necessary. These days, in the social media landscape we live in, a game that captures people's attention, which Starfield is by default, and ESPECIALLY with the combination of GP, which reduces the barrier to entry to almost nothing, a game release can turn into a wildfire real quick. If MS dropped Starfield tomorrow, it would be trending on twitter for the next week, and it would cost MS exactly nothing. |
I think Bethesda proved with Fallout 4 that you don't need some huge, long marketing campaign for a game to be a success. Fallout 4 was announced in May 2015 and released just 6 months later, which at the time was pretty rare for a AAA games with pretty much only yearly series like CoD, AC, and Forza doing 6 month announce to release windows. They proved that a AAA doesn't need to be announced 2 to 5 years in advance of release, with a long pre-release marketing campaign.
Sadly, Bethesda turned right around and announced both Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 at E3 2018, and here it is January 2023 and we are still waiting for Starfield to release which TES 6 hasn't gotten a single new trailer since it's announce and may not release until 2026 or even later. I hope that in the future Bethesda will go back to a more Fallout 5 like marketing structure.
I definitely agree that Starfield could drop tomorrow and be played by 15m+ players in the first week most likely thanks to free social media marketing and Gamepass, and even more players if Xbox had a big TV and internet marketing campaign and review embargo ready to drop on the day of the surprise launch. But I also agree that Xbox isn't likely to go that route.
