Did the MTV special backfire on MS?

Please, you telling me that what was shown on MTV in quick cuts, blurry, and low quality, for a fraction of a second, is what convinced you? or if you were in Europe, what was NOT shown at all?

You've got to be one gullible, idiot consumer to buy something completely based on a infomercial filled with hipsters hawking a product and no real information given.
 
i just want to say that just because i was unimpressed with the MTV info-ganda doesn't mean that i won't be buying an xbox 360. in fact, depending on the price, i'll be preordering as soon as local retailers start accepting preorders. i was unimpressed with what was shown, don't particularly care for the design of the unit or the controller, and the general lack of any new information about hardware drove me nuts. i like being "in the know" and reading internet rumors and all, but when you realize that all of the rumors that were at all plausable are true it kind of takes the magic out of the reveal.
 
DemoCoder said:
Please, you telling me that what was shown on MTV in quick cuts, blurry, and low quality, for a fraction of a second, is what convinced you? or if you were in Europe, what was NOT shown at all?

You've got to be one gullible, idiot consumer to buy something completely based on a infomercial filled with hipsters hawking a product and no real information given.
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The MTV show wasn't what made me decide, it was the aftermath of info on the internet as a direct result that they made me decide. ;)
 
It didn't matter if it was MTV or some monkeys showing the xbox 360 in a jungle on Discovery channel. What it did was it allowed Microsoft to start their hype-machine before Sony's... mission accomplished.
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IMO, that show slowed down the Xbox 360 hype train significantly among the core gamers who follow things on the internet, and probably did little to hype up the casual MTV viewers - it was that bad.

Xbox 360 was the talk of the town before things came out in open... now even the most hardboiled fans seem shaken, if not completely disappointed by the crappiness of that show, uninspiredness of the games shown so far, and unfullfilled hopes in the area of visuals. Making PD0 a flagship game, the only one that is playable, and making it look like it did, didn't help the matter.

Yes, I know, unfinished hardware and all, but why show stuff that is clearly not ready? In any case, E3 is close, and I think they'll have much better showing, more announcements and more complete games there.
 
Even if PDZ wasn't the most impressive game to show, MS has the most incentive to feature it now and for launch.

Remember the controvery about MS bundling only first-party games when the Xbox came out? They obviously make more money from first-party than 3rd-party games.

They want to establish PDZ as the next Halo. What other first-party game has the potential to reach Halo sales?
 
Qroach said:
It was a teaser, it shows what the console looked like, shows some quick clips of games and nothing more. What the heck do you expect a teaser to do exactly? give you all the tech specs and show you every game indepth?
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The European version didn't show those quick clips, it had ZERO seconds of game footage. And the whole console was shown 4 seconds, I don't think that wasn't even a teaser, that was a joke. The US version can be considerd being a teaser.
 
blakjedi said:
I didnt get to see the special (I was at the Miami Heat- Washington Wizards playoff game :p )

But the buzz I have gotten from real, non-technical people was that it was a lukewarm and/or slightly corny showing.... better that they deliver a documentary special with a serious tone I guess.I had to send a couple folks vids of PGR3, and 2k6 for them to get excited about the next generation and they said they must've missed these.

What y'all think?
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Waste of time, waste of money for MS. It was the worst product unveiling I've ever seen.
 
It was a teaser, it shows what the console looked like, shows some quick clips of games and nothing more. What the heck do you expect a teaser to do exactly?
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Dr Evil is talking about the European show, which was basically the same as the US show but without the gaming aspects..
 
I'm with Phil here - I'm really surprised at Microsoft's poor effort.

Granted, to the idiot masses who regularly watch MTV, the content of this show may have been acceptable, and it certainly got the word out about a new Xbox console. So in this respect you could call it a success.

However, this doesn't excuse the overall crappiness of the show and ESPECIALLY the fact that, as someone mentioned previously, hardcore gamers came away unimpressed and even angry at such a "waste of 30 minutes."

Sony's strategy in 1995 was to light a fire under the hardcore gamers because those are the people you need to convince first. These are the people who start flaps and fads which can eventually turn into real momentum that spreads to the mass market. Microsoft actually managed to create a show that may (and I do mean MAY) have appealed to that casual audience while basically putting off hardcore gamers.

I'm mystified by what I saw, and ultimately, I think this illustrates Microsoft's lack of knowledge about how to approach this market. It knows PCs and operating systems, but I'm not so sure about gamers anymore.

Bottom line, this special, combined with J Allard's new look, betrays a naiveté and insincerity that I, personally, find repelling.
 
No. Mainstream folks, they wanted to show a sneak peak to the casuals.

Of course we......get all rilled up like poor babys, but we forget that MS has E3 all for us.
 
This teaser wasn't meant for hardcore gamers. it was meant for casuals, hardcore gamers will get all thier information from E3 (which casual gamers have no real idea about).

...and thanks teasy, but I know which version of the show he's referring to.

The MTV show served it's purpose and let people know that xbox 360 exsists. You over analyzing of what's simply used to make casuals aware without providing real detail, is simply a waste of your time and energy. hardcore gamers are impressed by actual games that will be shown in far more detail at E3.
 
Quincy, what I was trying to get at was the quite significant difference between the European version and the version you saw. You don't know how bad the European show was.
 
The negative rhetoric towards Microsoft seems to be a echo from when the first X-Box launched. While they lost a lot of money, they did have some success. Many predicted absolute failure with the first X-Box, and MS proved them wrong. Halo being probably the biggest victory. If Microsoft wants to replicate the blockbuster impact of Halo with Perfect Dark Zero, it's true they aren't off to a good start, but the marketing has only just begun.


Things are so much more in MS's favor right now.

1) They are launching alone.
2) They will have LIVE up and running from day one
3) They have EA's full support on LIVE from day one
4) They have an increase in Japanese developer support
5) Later in the consoles cycle Halo 3 is going to generate a lot of intrest



In my opinion, reading a forum like GAF it seems the majority of gamers hate on EA, yet EA games sell really well. This is a classic example of how people posting their opinions on a dedicated game forum don't neccesarily reflect the real world situation.

All the praise Metal Gear Solid 3 got, yet where are the incredible sale numbers for a platform with a very large user base? To me by reading a forum like GAF one would guess this game would have ruled the sales charts.

KOTOR for X-Box recieved massive critical acclaim and had a very hot franchise brand. It did well for an RPG sales wise, but considering theyhype on game forums, it made no major impact on casuals.

I have no idea how casuals gamers viewed the X-Box 360 special, but by reading the reactions of gamers on GAF or Beyond3D, this most certainly won't represent the causal gamers opinion.
 
Maybe it's just me, but I considered it to be a technology release and not a games release, and therefore I didn't really expect to see an awful lot of games.
I think that MS primary objective was to put the new console name in the public domain and get people talking about it. In this respect I believe they have been very very successful. After hearing about it I think a lot of people have hit the net to find out more, and lo, MS has made sure that plenty of screenies and videos are available in one way or another........I also think that they've deliberately done this in the form of "leaks" as I think this gives the average school kid that "ooh, I'm a hacker looking at leaked screenshots" type of buzz - something the average schoolkid will think of as being really naughty and "cool", and run off to school the next day to brag about.
 
I don't think anyone quite knows what the show was for, and in that respect it sounds like MS goofed.

I see they had a few possiblities :

1) Tech unveiling - Talk hype, talk big numbers. Reiterate the name 'XB360' over and over with a few bands and music to involve it into the hip-and-happening scene.

2) 'Cultural invasion' - springboard off MTV into the minds of the masses by involving XB360 in everything MTV. Have bucket loads of celebs praising it. Make out XB360 is the next big thing.

3) 'Mystery' - Similar to the OurColony campaign, create a sesne of mystery around the product that makes people question what it is, get talking, and so keep it in the public mindset. Quick clips, a few seconds here and there of top-quality visuals, strange hints and sound-bites, never clear on what XB360 is but making sound like something you want to learn more about.

As I understand it, the MTV show failed on all of these accounts. Perhaps it was a good idea but MS don't have the expertise to pull it off?
 
we have 12 xbox 360 preorders since friday .

This is already more than we had for the xbox 3 months before it launched.

I think it succeeded as it wasn't aimed at us . It was aimed at the mtv market . If it was aimed at us they would have released it on thier website with a ton of game footage and in depth tech specs .


They want to broaden thier customer base and they did so by hitting the mtv crowd. Hopefully they hit another segment and then another and then another
 
MS needs to do something about the $50 preorders though. It should be $20 tops.

I may just have to take chances going to Target.
 
yeah my cousin call me and said he preordered it he said he wasn't going to but the gamestop guy told him the ps3 wasn't going to come out until 2007 :LOL:
 
Yeahm, the games stores of course want to sell everything, so they're obviously pimping the xbox360 big time because they wish to get good sales for it as for anything they sell.
PS3 will sell pretty much sell with it's own strength.

I know how it works, I have know people who work at these stores too.

About the european MTV xbox360 show, I don't think it did much at all to bring the console to the audiences awareness.
Only glimpse of the console that I remember was shown when that woman brought it to that altar, and then after taht it was all about Killer and Snow Patrol. At some point there was some kind of "commercial" with many ordinary people saying some tidbits about the console like "I hear it can do this and that etc...".
Only game footage I saw was a split second of some fps (PDZ?) game that they played somewhere with people watching and some blone jumping enthusiastically when apparently someone scored a hit (I think she saw a camera filming and she just wanted to bounce her boobs :))
Maybe if it'll launch here later 2006 they'll do a new show :?
That game footage was jerky as hell, looked like below 20fps.
 
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