MS promotion going all out!

[Jon Brittan]

Reminds me of some Dreamcast's adverts when there was some working in SEGA that is now working in MS.
The first time that technique was not very succesful, I wonder what's going to happen this time

Still, might achieve something, unlike PMing people about inter-company football, eh?


On a more on-topic note, I think it's a good plan and long overdue from Microsoft, we simply have not seen enough advertisement from them in the entire lifetime of the Xbox brand. Personally, in this country, I'm still amazed they haven't made far more of a play of the fact that 360 is the only place (currently) where you can get the full FIFA 07 experience, even though EA play up the difference in 07 between 360 and last-gen machines. Football is very much the place to start in the UK, much like American Football tends to be in the US.

 

[expletive]

Speaking of 360 ads I saw one today that made me lauigh. It was an ad for the 360 with a game at £299.99 and PES6 free and at the bottom it said "HD gaming starts at £199.99". The £199.99 360 is the basic model which doesn't include component cables and therefore can't display HDTV resolutions

To be fair though, neither does either PS3 so the relative value is still there.

 

[assen]

Similar blitz in Madrid, my contact there says, with huge Gears and 360 ads in all 4 free newspapers.

 

[Angelcurio]

No, I came up with this thing which reminds me of past behaviours, that's it. is it a similar strategy? Yes, it is, period. Everything you added comes from your brain, not from mine.
Stop reading other ppl mind cause you're not good at this.

Not only its a similar strategy, its also directed by the same marketting boss

 

[Teasy]

To be fair though, neither does either PS3 so the relative value is still there.

Didn't say anything about value or competetiveness vs PS3. I was talking about the advert being funny due to the fact that it calls a 360 without a component cable "HD gaming".

 

[London Geezer]

I said nothing about value or competetiveness vs PS3. I was talking about the advert being funny due to the fact that it calls a 360 without a component cable "HD gaming".

The funny/crazy thing is that a lot of people still won't have a clue of that fact, and will be convinced that they're seeing "teh HD gaming", when they plug the 360 with composite cables to their old SD TVs.

Lots of people still don't understand the fact that to get HD, you need to have HD from beginning to end, from the material to the TV itself. Like people who think that they're watching HD stuff, when plsying DVDs on their shiny new HDTVs, just because the TV is HD, and their DVD player probably says "HD scaling" or whatever on it.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I notice in the French paper (once I could peel my eyes away from pages 16 & 17) an advert for "XBOX 360 Classics", so it looks like there will be a number of cut price games ready for Christmas as well.

 

[Tap In]

Didn't say anything about value or competetiveness vs PS3. I was talking about the advert being funny due to the fact that it calls a 360 without a component cable "HD gaming".

you do realize that PS3 (which they also call HD gaming) comes only with composite cables in both of their systems?

360 has component cables in the premium version.

edit:

woops... already pointed out above.

 

[Jon Brittan]

I notice in the French paper (once I could peel my eye away from pages 16 & 17) an advert for "XBOX 360 Classics", so it looks like there will be a number of cut price games ready for Christmas as well.

PD0 is already in shops with "classic" boxing and price-tag...

 

[expletive]

I've been personally surprised by the lack of Gears advertising in NA. I've only seen the commercial once and being in the target demographic i would have expected to have seen it every few minutes. I guess they are waiting for the WIi/PS3 launch craziness to die down to get the most traction with these ads?

 

[PeterT]

Even though I'm normally unaffected by advertising (I don't watch TV or read print mags, and adblock works very well) I catched a bit of this already. If they keep this amount of pressure up until christmas - and perhaps get a bit of help from Sony in terms of bad march numbers or even another delay - I can imagine a huge swing in the 360 direction in europe. If Trusty Bell, LO or Mass Effect were out already, I'd be tempted as well

 

[Diamond.G]

Has anyone seen the Sonic commercial? I was almost excited, then I realized what it was for and got kinda upset. I have yet to see a GeoW commercial. There are quite a few Wii commercials on though.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

MS is going on overload here in norway aswell.

On tv:

The cops and robbers commercial
Gears of War trailer.

In the papers:
lots of varius x360 ads.
+ lots of 10\10 scores for GoW

Bundles:
Big chaines are offering you a X360 core + GoW for 1900 NOK. (Thats roughly 300 euros, but its dirt cheap considering the Core system went for 2700 NOK [400 euros] at launch and the Premiums went for 3600 NOK.)

Unrelated note: GoW sold out in about 3 hours in our capital city, Oslo, today

 

[wco81]

Well a couple of outlets with limited distribution are offering $100 or more off the X360. Perhaps MS is behind that as well but they can't cut the price permanently or do it widespread.

So they dribble out some units at low, low prices.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I don't know if you are specifically referencing the rebate that was posted earlier, but I did a web search on that, and it seems rather... well... shady.

Shady to the point where the rebate doesn't come from Microsoft, it comes from the retailier, and from previous claims, the retailier does just about everything it can legally do in order to avoid paying out on those people that put in claims.

So I would say that those rebates have nothing at all to do with MS, and they have everything to do with the retailer offering pie-in-the-sky prices, hoping that you won't follow the process letter by letter, and then washing their hands of claims after a set period of days if the consumer hasn't complied.

I don't think they are any reflection at all on MS.

MS will drop the price on the 360 after the Holday season is over, and probably right before the "Next Big Game" is released.

As it stands currently, I'll agree with whatever MS rep it was that was expressing his annoyance with the fact that PS3's weren't available in Europe so that consumers there couldn't see the PS3 next to the 360.

At this point, it is actually in Sony's favor to not have an availability of consoles in a number of markets, because if they did, then consumers would see that there was no difference in the quality of PS3 games compared to their 360 counterparts.

Which is something that MS definately wants to ride, and will continue to ride for the next couple of years until developers really figure out how to milk the PS3. And that really sums up the entire battle for MS, which is something that we all should have known from the start. MS provided better development tools, so that developers can get more out of their console sooner. Sony provided a more powerful console, but one that takes more effort in order to realize the benefits.

These two strategies will collide at some point, the only questions are "when?" and "By how much?"

The problem is that with the current pricing structure, the "when" for the PS3 needs to happen in the immediate future and the "how much?" needs to be significant.

 

[LunchBox]

If it becomes effective, as in sales of the X360 skyrocket...

then kudos to that advertising company