Right. you can't have one without the other. However, marketing will be more important to new IPs. eg. all your friends had decided to buy MW2 long before advertising began. How would a competing game, a better game that these people would like more, attract their attention and convert their purchase?
I agree that marketing with new ip's is critical. I've also always argued that the best time to launch a new ip is to coincide it with a new console launch along with a marketing blitz, because there isn't much out there for people to buy at launch so there is a good chance that people will pick up your new ip just to try it out. For this gen, Resistance and Gears Of War are two good examples of this. But the games we are talking about aren't new ips, they are games like R2, U2, KZ2, etc...
Fast forward to the sequel Resistance 2. Was there really a marketing failure with this title? Can anyone really say with confidence that the Resistance ip is largely unknown to PS3 users? I personally do not subscribe to the fact that marketing for this title failed and that most PS3 users are still unaware of the Resistance ip's existence. Instead my theory is that word of mouth on the first game was just average, and with tons of A+ games to choose from the Resistance ip fell out of peoples top 10 list.
Take Uncharted 2 as another example. Can anyone say with confidence that the Uncharted ip is unknown to PS3 users? Was this really another marketing failure? Or is it possible that after having tried U1, that word of mouth on U2 was that while it might good game, it's maybe more of a good weekend rental instead of a buy?
Take KZ2 as a third example. Marketing failure? There have been so many commercials for this game. In fact I think I even recall seeing a commercial for it at a theater. Shooters are often categorized as games for the gamer hardcore, so does anyone feel that there is any hardcore PS3 gamer that hasn't heard of the KZ2 ip? Is it because of marketing that sales didn't hit the mark, or is it perhaps the double whammy of the first game in the series being not known as anything special, and then perhaps, just perhaps, people trying the demo and being totally turned off by the controls? Perhaps, and jsut perhaps, they tried KZ2 online and found the experience just lacking compared to say MW or Halo 3?
In all of the above cases, namely the Resistance, Uncharted and Killzone ip's, I don't feel at all that marketing has failed them. In fact it's the opposite, marketing on them has worked so well that just about every gamer knows of those three ip's. Marketing fails when for example someone mentions an ip and someone else has no clue what they are talking about. Like if I said "Hey have you played Uncharted" and someone replies "What's that?", then marketing has hugely failed. I really find it hard to believe that PS3 owners by and large have no knowledge of the Resistance, Uncharted and Killzone ips. I think I'd sooner be able to find someone that hasn't heard of Chevy. So marketing's primary goal is to create ip awareness, which in this case it has done very well.
It's additional goal is to create future excitement to further the brand and it's sales, and that's where the problem lies. Not because the marketing wasn't there mind you, but because while the marketing succeeded at it's first goal to make those ip's well known, they could not overcome the word of mouth on the current games as well as the high level of A+ gaming competition. If said games had made a huge splash with their first games in the series that would have helped (like with MW), but alas they didn't.
Ultimately I believe the players have spoken with their wallets and they have bought what they liked best, simple as that. I don't subscribe to the "everyone buys what marketing tells them" theory, but that's just me.
Their mind was already made up by prior experience. This is true for all the big hitters - the sequel is going to be bought. All the other developers in the world need to find a way to get them to stop following what they know and try something new and untested.
That isn't necessarily the case though. Halo 3 was so well loved that ridiculous sales for Halo Reach are all but assured. MW was so popular as well that sales for MW2 were also expected to be huge. It's not marketing that did the trick there, but the fact that the prior games in the series were so good that people expected similar awesomeness from the sequels. Marketing helps launch the ip, then the games and their sequels carry them to sales along with help from marketing to create excitement. As important as marketing may be, without a good game you are still s.o.l.
Now look at the Tomb Raider franchise. Years ago there was tons of marketing done for it. There had to, it was a new ip so they had to get the word out. Fast forward a little and it became a well love game to where for a while sales of the sequels were all but assured. But fast forward some more and something changed along the way, and sales have been considered disappointing. Is that due to a marketing failure? I don't think so. Is there really anyone left alive that doesn't know who Lara Croft is? But after a few mediocre games the franchise took a hit and sequel sales no longer became automatic. Even the most current game, Underworld, while a good game was still deemed a sales failure. Again I think marketing has nothing to do with that, instead the hit is two fold. The first chunk of damage was done by some of the games in the series being less than stellar, and secondly is that clearly there is something about the play style of the game that just isn't appealing to people as much as Eidos would like. Maybe the play style is deemed a bit dated, maybe the ip is tired, who knows. But I don't think it's marketing that failed it, I think the game itself did perhaps because it didn't evolve quickly enough, or maybe it became viewed as the same old same old compared to the competition.
