How to sell next-gen consoles, Marketing, Positioning, and Pricing [2020]

Apologies, twenty-hour day and late post. So PS4's launch figures were beaten in some crazy Holiday sales periods.

My point is, launch is often a blowout and not typical of sales month-to-month throughout the year, each subsequent year. If it were, PS4 would have sold in excess of 210m million by now.

 

Well it launched during the same period as well and perhaps could have sold more units had there been supply, but as it is the launch year holiday sales weren't very good compared to other years. Launch and holidays somewhat cancel each other in sales if you launch at the end of the year. I have wondered why nobody else other than Nintendo with the Switch hasn't launched outside of holidays to get 2 big sales periods within one year.

 

Sony have some experience in this, the PSP launched in March and the Vita in February. Outside of Japan and North America, PS3 launched in March and PS4 launched in February in Japan.

If, like Microsoft and Sony, you're up against a competitor who using what essentially the same fundamental tech, you have less choice as your launch window is predicated on finalising the chip design and fabrication. You can't bring it forward and pushing it back risks your competitor stealing your sales. Why these windows are falling falling in Holidays though.. maybe by design, or maybe just coincidence.

 

I'm actually skeptical we'll get that kind of show.
Not sure the show itself was the issue people will have, but what was shown.

The issue with that is this was billed as first look at xsx gameplay.
There's definitely a place for AA and indie, but as your best foot forward I'd disagree with.
This show in that regards should've been the third one in the show line up.

 

I remember how Killzone Shadow fall blew last gen out of the water.


Right now the downvotes are in the 10ks and upvotes at 4.4k.
They made the stream private but I saw how the downvotes blew up after Valhalla didn't really show any gameplay.

It's not that it doesn't suit this forum's taste, it probably didn't suit the target audience either.

 

So what does it mean if the presentation was massively downvoted but the individual game trailers are massively upvoted? Read the tea leaves for me.

 

No they don't.

 

Probably in the vicinity of a botched press event.

Deleting dislikes probably doesn't help the sentiment either.

Unless this is part of some wierd signed contract between these studios and Microsoft.

 

It means the packaging was the problem, not the games themselves.

 

Listen, I dunno, I can only speak for myself nor will I speak for others.
I'm not trying to defend the presentation, it was botched imo, but there are some comments that I think are out of bounds for criticism which is why I'm replying.

I was disappointed because I didn't get my 4K/60 stream, and to me when things aren't in 4K/HDR I don't see it as next gen that's sort of been my thing since upgrading to XSX.

That's just sort of how things are for me. With the new trailers in 4K/60 things are much better for me then my first pass at them.
The presentation was botched, but the individual movies are doing well.

 

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but feedback on Twitter is not good. "gameplay" started trending. Even some Microsoft fans were put off. Jez at Windows Central posted an article that I feel does a good job explaining it.

https://www.windowscentral.com/todays-xbox-showcase-glimpse-difficulty-marketing-pandemic-era

However, I don't think COVID had as much effect on it as he is touting. It definitely didn't help though.

Tommy McClain

 

No feedback on social media is ever good, just look at the cluster with The Last Of Us 2.

 

Yea they should be raked over coals for that, this is valid criticism. There was no gameplay, just in-game cutscenes.
Very little visible gameplay.

But can be said here; this is the direction games are headed. Sell the emotion, the atmosphere, the narrative, show graphics, toss smart dynamic game-play for curated big set pieces and quick time events.

 

The thing about gameplay showcases is that they're boring for many games. So you make like a 'reaction' Twitch stream and it comes off as false. So you make it with pretend player banter, like a Rainbow Six demo, and it's even more ridiculous.

Ironically, one of the best players playing and having fun was MS's Sea of Thieves demo. It just looked like a laugh. That just doesn't work for stuff like The Medium.

 

Yes and that was the big mistake, they should of just had the show and the first time people actually heard about optimised for series x was during the video clip.
It's also kind of unfair to the developers who seem to mainly be indy or AA.

 

This was to be expected. Here are the reasons:

-Only 16 Gbyte Ram in both Consoles is not a big Jump compare to previous Genrerations. If you want CGI Qualitity with uncompressed Pixels , full Color Textures , huge Worlds with lots of Geometry etc.. you need at least 64 Gbyte minimum.

-Focusing on Compression, Streaming Technics instead of compromissless Brute Force Power.

-Focusing on Play Anywhere Ecosystem, Forward and Backcompatibility between Generations , Plattform independed Graphic Engines , Xbox X Series Hardware is holding back by the PC , Xbox One and DirectX12.

-No Support of a proper Hardware and Hardware optimized Code from Microsoft without any connections to PCs , Xbox One or Windows 10.

-using the same Engines from previous Generation, like Unreal, Unity, Cryengine etc.. Nextgen Consoles need new and fresh Engines building up from the Ground to support a proper new Hardware for great Visuals.

-lazy and untalented Devs without any good feeling about Artwork , Design and Colors.

-Not enough Time to create great Visuals , for Workarounds and Tricks in view of the Limitations and Restrictions these Nextgen Consoles have. So for a real Jump they need 2-3 Years.

 

I think the next gen consoles will give us big jumps. My dismay was more with the lack of real game play, particularly of the big title AC Valhalla.

Also, these first titles are cross gen, and support so many different platforms it's ridiculous (base One, One X, PS4, PS4 Pro, PC (endless configs) , Xsx, and PS5. As such you're just getting a sliding scale of incremental graphical toggles which is likely not going to wow us, particularly over youtube (effect will be greater in person). At least eventually we will move to Lockhart (if it exists) as our base, which will be a big jump over One no X.

But even XSX target footage of AC:V could have possibly impressed IMO, if we'd seen an actual gameplay demo.

 

Cerny ps5 presentation was rather bizzare marketing and today this. Whats the point to hype nextgen games ("2d to 3d", "Tomorrow changes the game. Or rather, the games do the changing.") and showing some mediocre 3rd party crossgen titles ?

 

Why show the games that are going to be released on the system? ... Because they're the games that are going to be available to buy for these systems ... ?

 

but you know it's for nextgen console that you rather want to hype to sell ? if it was xox sneak peek new games presentation that fine, it would be good presentation, but as an xsx gameplay presentation this was rather marketing failure