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Archive for May, 2010
EA ‘Couldn’t Be More Pleased’ with Super Bowl Ad Spend for Dante’s Inferno
May 27th
IndustryGamers was the first to bring you the news that Electronic Arts would be shelling out the big bucks to secure a TV spot during the Super Bowl. The 30-second advertisement likely cost EA in the range of $3 million, which is an awful lot of dough to spend on just one component of a video game marketing campaign. We have to wonder if it was worth the investment for the publisher. Thankfully our friends at the[a]listdaily got an answer straight from the horse’s mouth.
Phil Marineau, Sr. Product Manager for Dante’s Inferno, explained that the Super Bowl ad generated enough buzz that it was worth every penny. When you’re trying to get attention for a brand-new IP in a crowded market, standing out can be difficult. “From the marketing standpoint, we couldn’t be more pleased,” Marineau said of the Super Bowl spot. “With Dante’s we’ve tried to have big ideas the whole time and that came up with this; we could buy a whole bunch of cable spots or we could go after the large reach, the large audience. We knew we had to leverage it as much as possible and we told management how we were going to do it. We got lucky; it was the third most watched spot of the Super Bowl. People, WSJ put it in the top five, Wired put it number one. Our Google searches were through the roof. So the Super Bowl spot worked well for us.”
Check out the full interview with Marineau for much more on the wide-ranging campaign that EA put together for Dante’s.
Xbox 360’s Natal Will Fail, says Former Microsoft Exec
May 27th
With E3 now just a few short weeks away, both Microsoft and Sony are preparing to make a big splash at the annual expo with their respective motion platforms. Microsoft has been hyping its Project Natal for nearly a whole year now, ever since the company first unveiled the motion camera at last year’s E3. We’ll find out much more about its capabilities, pricing and games at the world premiere event kicking off E3 on June 13. But just how successful will this Natal experiment be?
While Microsoft is clearly very optimistic and believe they’ll “sell millions and millions,” former Microsoft studio manager Scot Bayless (who also was a Senior Producer at Sega of America when the 32X peripheral launched for the Genesis) isn’t so sure that Natal will succeed. He thinks the peripheral could suffer a similar fate as the 32X.
“When I met with Microsoft in 2008 to look at Natal I asked: ‘When will you integrate this into the 360?’” Bayless commented in the latest issue of Retro Gamer [thanks NowGamer]. “Their response was: ‘We’re probably going to wait and see on that.’ To which I said: Then you’re going to fail.’”
Bayless, who also held senior roles at EA, Midway and Capcom, believes that Natal will ultimately split developers and the market. “Plays like this always fragment and the disincentive to developers is powerful; when I’m spending tens of millions on a game, the last thing I want to do is lose 90 per cent of my market,” he lamented.
This week an industry source pegged Natal at $149 – if true, the device’s price point will be much higher than many analysts thought, and would be another obstacle for mass adoption.
EA On THQ Partners Program: ‘Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight’
May 27th
The Electronic Arts Partners program has been a successful setup for the publishing giant. With yesterday’s announcement on bringing in Insomniac Games, as well as the partnerships formed with Crytek, Epic, Valve, Respawn and other major studios, EA certainly has a good thing going.
THQ’s announcement on their own Partners program is a direct challenge to that business model, and it could spark the beginning of an intensely fierce competitive war between the two publishers.
EA not only decided to embrace the new competition, but they decided to offer THQ a bit of start up advice. “We welcome the competition as broad support for independent development is very healthy for our industry,” EA Partners boss David DeMartini told CVG. “It’s great to see other publishers stepping up their support for independent developers like EA Partners has been doing for the past 15 years. Fortunately for us, publishing and sales excellence is key to the success of these programs – and that doesn’t happen overnight.”
The recent discussion with Insomniac Games’ CEO Ted Price has just become more relevant as it now strengthens the idea of a continued push for a more amicable publisher/developer relationship in regards to intellectual property and management. EA has proven the concept works, and developers are taking notice. This could be the start of an entirely new industry-wide business model if things keep at the current momentum.
