Submitted by SupremeJelly t3_10pjngt in gaming
I firmly believe that if you give fans enough time they will learn to hate anything you give them. Anything.
So why not avoid that entirely and just Stealth Release your games like Hi-Fi Rush did? The tactic's even had (limited) success in the indie scene with a little game nobody's heard of called Undertale.
Obviously not every game can do it but it's certainly a valid form of marketing isn't it?
You've heard of Hifi Rush because it had a successful shadow drop. Have you ever heard of any unsuccessful shadow dropped games?
Investors
The bigger the studio the higher the chance that someone talks.
Edit: Oh and...hype sells pretty good!
People willing to spend $$ before seeing the product, simple no brainer when your only objective is to increase bottom line
Big studios do press releases to hype the base, but also to hype up investors. It is more likely you’d get an investor or that your share price rises if you’ve got a product you’re working on.
Hi-Fi Rush is not a AAA game though
And hype is real. Remember, CP2077, even in its broken aaa buggy release sold like hotcakes.
AAA game cost money. Money comes from investors. Investors invest to potentially earn more money. Now proceed to convince investor that a stealth release, 0 hype, 0 marketing release will make them more money.
Beeeecause marketing= sales and sales= money? Nahhhh that can’t be it. Surely none of these companies want to run a proper business…
Because anouncing games and setting release dates is not really for the consumer, it's for the investors so AAA games will always get anounced to generate hype and ensure to the investors the money was "well spent".
Indie games do not have this problem so they can get away with little to no marketing.
Because it's really hard to do right. To find that balance between the enemy that is completely unaware you're killing his buddy 2 feet away and having the enemy share a hivemind so if one of them sees you in a bush the entire map knows your exact location instantly.
When it works it works but a lot of games have tried and done poorly and it's put the scare in a lot of developers when it comes to taking a chance on something so haphazardly successful.
The last thing you want, is release a game when people go “what game was that? Never heard of it? Did anyone know it was released?”
While Hi-Fi Rush managed it, you cannot guarantee it will for other games. When you invest so much into a AAA game, the last thing you want is marketing to fail you.
Marketing works, while many people criticise the game etc, it doesn’t matter as long as it achieve its sales target.
Stealth release, many people may not know of it, while you get less criticism, it is meaningless if sales target not reached.
I understand the need for marketing because of getting people hyped for the game and all but I really wish they would wait to start marketing until the game was finished and just being polished up. I honestly feel like sometimes they spend so much time marketing rather than polishing up the game so we end up with game breaking bugs at release instead of a more polished piece.
The problem is that they look at their bottom line. Sure the game wasn't great and had bad reviews...but we sold millions in preorders and people keep buying it! What they actually don't buy it now? Let's put it on sale to pump up those numbers for our next investor call.
Some devs wait to start development until E3 *cough*Anthem*cough*
Don't even get me started on Anthem. 😂
Hifi is gonna come and go my friend, just like stray
JingleJangleJin t1_j6kuhpo wrote
Because contrary to what Reddit may lead you to think hype marketing works really, really well