NCAA March Madness 09 News Post

A Look at EA's Marketing Hype Machine

09:33 PM - November 5, 2008 by RaychelSnr

The first thing I thought when I heard EA Sports would be partnering with Blue Ribbon for the new NCAA Basketball 09 game was: Is this a real news story, or is this a marketing ploy by EA to bring attention to its game? To be fair, I’m sure it was a little bit of both.

It’s suspicious to me how EA announces such a feature/partnership at this time of the year since it could impact the game in tremendous ways as far as strategy is concerned; did EA land this partnership when developers started working on this title approximately 10 months ago when development began or not? Of course, I am perhaps being a bit naiveté to think in those rational terms, because most probably believe this is a full-on marketing tactic by EA that was created to develop hype and gain some publicity on gaming sites. So, I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me either if this feature was in the works many months prior to the recent press release.

Read More: A Look at EA's Marketing Hype Machine

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Member Comments

# 1 DubTrey1 @ 11/05/08 11:27 PM

IMO, EA has done a great job of duping the "casual gamer" into buying their games. I know many of us are critical and have been for quite sometime, but you cannot deny that they are a powerhouse in marketing and know how to produce enough buzz, eye candy and innovative marketing devices to pull in buyers. The unfortunate part of this is that the biggest flaw is that is they would spend the effort on the games themselves, perhaps their marketing efforts would be validated by actual games that are better than 5.5', 7.0's etc.

# 2 spit_bubble @ 11/05/08 11:51 PM

Consumers, especially American ones, are one of the most powerful forces on the face of the earth...

If only they knew that...

# 3 taiketsu @ 11/06/08 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by koshi


	Consumers, especially American ones, are one of the most powerful forces on the face of the earth... If only they knew that...

Many of us American consumers would like to believe that, hence, the popular saying, "the customer is always right!" Unfortunately, we're also suckers for slick marketing and we have no self control.

Case in point, how many times have you read a post on a game-related forum of someone complaining how a game from EA was so poorly executed that they will 'never' buy a game from them again? Yet, their sales continue to soar.

To all the fans of the alternative sports gaming franchises, namely, nfl 2k fans: do you realize that if you stop buying EA games it will eventually not be cost effective for them to purchase exclusive gaming licenses? They would actually have to create decent games to earn your sales.

To be fair, EA has certainly made strides with the FIFA, NHL, and even the NBA Live franchise. I don't think it's a coincidence that their most improved annual titles are the ones with the stiffest competition.
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# 4 asu666 @ 11/06/08 11:01 AM

"Every year EA gets its customer base and other constituents alike to believe that this is the year its game will have unprecedented realism."

Truer words have never been spoken.

# 5 asu666 @ 11/06/08 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by koshi


	Consumers, especially American ones, are one of the most powerful forces on the face of the earth... If only they knew that...

Consumers are sheep being led to slaughter. What did Bush say after 9/11? "Go out and shop." It kind of sounds like someone telling a drunk to have another.

The reason we are in a financial mess right now and our government owes over 10 Trillion dollars to other countries is because we all have to have the new shiny item, even if we don't have the money to pay for it. Debt is a legal form a slavery because we willingly enter into it. Oh by the way, 10 Trillion Dollars works out to over a quarter-of-a-million dollars owed by every man, woman, and child in the United States. EA is just the shiny example in the video game industry of a corporation that makes people think they need something.

# 6 PaulZweber @ 11/06/08 11:31 AM

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 06 Nov 2008 is $10,572,829,562,938.84

The estimated population of the United States is 305,044,972
so each citizen's share of this debt is $34,659.91.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.87 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

# 7 asu666 @ 11/06/08 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaulZweber


	The Outstanding Public Debt as of 06 Nov 2008 is $10,572,829,562,938.84 The estimated population of the United States is 305,044,972 so each citizen's share of this debt is $34,659.91. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.87 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

Thanks for the correction. I misquoted an estimate for each working American when federal, state, local, and personal debt (mortegages, cars, college loans, etc.) are combined. Either way we are looking at some already bad numbers getting a lot worse.

The video game industry had been thought to be somewhat recession proof, but EA took a pretty big hit on slowing sales last quarter. Hopefully people will give Dead Space and Mirror's Edge a try to encourage EA to focus on innovation and quality being the road to better profits. I think a lot of the devs at EA really want to blow out their production schedules and create some great experiences, but I'm sure the accounting issues in doing something like that give some of the execs vertigo.

# 8 edaddy @ 11/06/08 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asu666


	"Every year EA gets its customer base and other constituents alike to believe that this is the year its game will have unprecedented realism." Truer words have never been spoken.

Agree 100%...I call it the EA way...the marketing and hype of Madden and NCAA trumps anything that EA actually does to actually improve the game..Marginal improvements plus oversaturated hype equals big sales for EA..We all buy into the hype every year without fail..We have "community leaders" that start the process via community days and off we go..lol..While I believe that EA developers and producers frequent this site to get some insight from hardcore gamer to me the primary reason is to appease to these gamers and keep there loyalty for at least another cycle..There is no way EA can deliver on half the things they promise from year to year in regards to sports gaming particulrly football...but the hype and interaction would have you to believe that...

# 9 nxt @ 11/06/08 02:46 PM

...reminds me of the Mac commercial, where the PC guy is dividing the money on the table into two stacks for his budget: a large stack for advertising, and a small stack to fix Vista. The Mac guys says "Do you really think that amount of money is gonna fix Vista?" and the PC guys says, "I guess you're right, we'll just put it all in advertising." LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHtymB-lQIc

# 10 savoie2006 @ 11/06/08 04:33 PM

Well, in EA's defense all their sports series have gotten better since moving to the 360 and all or as realistic as they have ever been. I agree with the hype article completely though and previous to this year MOST of their sports games were just garbage.

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A Look at EA's Marketing Hype Machine