EEDAR: Marketing Sells More Than Good Reviews [Nov 16, 2009, 6:38 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
GamesIndusty.biz quotes EEDAR's Jesse Divnich speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit saying game marketing is far more influential than review scores, where he said: "You can make the greatest game and it won't even matter. I know that's discouraging to developers at first but it's very true." He goes on to say: "Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There's a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a videogame." They offer a couple of examples, thought the second is a bit odd, as it reflects an approximate 300% sales boost based on a greater than 1000% increase in marketing budget:
For its first three months on sale, BioShock, which had $5.5 million in US marketing behind it, sold twice as many copies of EA's Dead Space, which had a budget of $2 million. The same results were found for EA Sports Active, which sold around 720,000 copies with a marketing budget of $5.6 million, compared to My Fitness Coach, which shifted an estimated 250,000 units backed with a $50,000 budget.
Bioshock ads talked about how awesome it was. But really, it wasn't all that great. Reviewers were paid to say how revolutionary it was. It was not. At all.
I disagree about Bioshock not being great (though not "revolutionary"), but I felt the same way about Uncharted 1-2. Bleh, both games considered the best the consoles have to offer and they were so bland and boring.
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