Namco Bandai is spending big to make Dark Souls II the next big RPG blockbuster.

The publisher is splashing £1m on marketing the RPG, which is Namco’s biggest ever campaign. The title launches March 14th on PS3 and 360.

Dark Souls II is the sequel to the 2011 cult hit, which has garnered huge press attention with a number of celebrity and media fans.

“We really want to push Dark Souls as a franchise whilst looking after our core fans,” said Namco Bandai’s UK PR and marketing director Lee Kirton.

“It has our biggest TV, cinema and online support. We are spending over £1m on marketing in the UK, which is substantial for us. And we hope to sell over the units of the first Dark Souls.

“We view this as a reason to keep your PS3 and 360.”

The firm believes Dark Souls II can be a breakthrough for the series, and attract more mainstream RPG fans of titles like Skyrim.

“These games are very different beasts, but we think that fans of Skyrim, The Witcher and any RPG would be in to Dark Souls II and enjoy it,” said Kirton.

The firm’s cinema campaign includes spots around Robocop, Non-Stop, 300: Rise of an Empire and Need for Speed.

Print advertising has run for over a year, while the TV campaign begins on March 8th, running for two weeks across Channel 4, Film 4, E4, Channel 5, Dave, Sky 1, Sky Movies, Sky Sports and more.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/namco-bandai-readies-1m-dark-souls-ii-campaign/0128174

Now Skyrim seems to be to RPGs what COD is to FPS, other devs/publishers will keep bringing it up and chase those Skyrim $$$

Anyway, I hope the IP is successful but also hope it doesn´t lose its 'soul' (pun intended) in the process.

1 million Pounds for the UK alone? That suggests $10 million in worldwide marketing (if we adjust for the exchange rate and assume the UK is around 10-15% of global sales for a game like Dark Souls), and is a big proportion of the total game budget.

So that's over $1.7m in the UK alone. Means selling more than 60k copies just to tie those expenses.

Considering we have UK sales of Dark Souls at 180k, that's quite a lot.

I played dark souls and was doing well until some jerk invaded and killed me. I never stood a chance, and ended up cursed to boot. Yeah, you may laugh at my misery but the chances of me buying Dark Souls 2 is slim to none.

P.S: I hate Blighttown.

Thats part of the excitement. You should give it another chance. Please buy Dark Souls 2.

How is being trounced by a player who's equipment is vastly superior to yours exciting? It cost me 6000 souls to break that curse. I thought the Dark Souls community was all about players helping each other through an unforgiving game. Boy, was I wrong.

Well yeah, disconnect from the internet. The DS community is up there as one of the worst communities ever. If you ever achieve anything in that game and post it on a forum be prepared to get shot down because someone out there is better than you and you dont deserve to be happy for your achievements

Thanks for the numbers. Doesn't make any sense.

It's actually worse than that, since some of the copies are for PC (£30 instead of £40), returns costs are higher than the US because of stronger consumer protection laws, and also the usual breakdown doesn't account for sales tax of 20%.

I feel insulted with your comment. Our comunity is know for supporting each other through Co-op, creating links that may go into real life. So I ask you nicely to remove what you said.

Of course this games also has PvP, but you're NOT forced to play online and you can always call for help of other players. PvP is also a fun feature that has to exist and many like to duel and consolidate links that go, like I said, beyond the game.