Please Advertise the PS3 Version Effectively

[Blackdomina]

I think it should have a free week trial to get people in the game.

[H-P]

Seriously make a damn epic commercial.... it won't kill you SE will it?! You do it for Kingdom Heart's show your mmorpg's more love!!!!!!!! where is the love ? where is the heart?

[H-P]

Do you not think mmorpg players watch television? hooollly crap watching t.v. while I play is the ONLY way I can get through crafting!

[H-P]

Think final fantasy X-2 commercial... make final fantasy less frowned upon *turn that frown upside down*

[Aveline]

Not only advertise through social media and television, but definitely bank on your word-of-mouth from those of us who have been playing. At PS3 launch, the existing playerbase will want to show off how much better the game is (hopefully!) to their friends as much as the dev team will. Get them out there! Allow them to pass out free trials to friends, and if they get three or four people to buy the game, give the existing player a unique in-game item that they can share with their friend (sort of like how the golden buddy pass worked in XI, but more immediate).

Get players talking about the game to their friends, give new players and returning, highly skeptical players a reason to try it out. Throw a big party in-game to celebrate the PS3 launch, with fireworks, special NPCs, and moogles galore. Get a buzz going about this game once it is ready! I want to see commercials, ad-wrappers on ZAM, tweets, press reviews and previews (and not just fan-translated from Japanese magazines, either!), junk-food tie ins at the grocery store, everything!

[Griss]

I wonder what kind of awesome would be produced if square hired the guys at Rooster Teeth to do some promo spots.

[Victor]

I'm doubtful they will have the money for any noteworthy advertising. All the devs and producers letters do is mention the "cost" of everything. It makes money sound like it is really tight for them.

[Aveline]

I'm doubtful they will have the money for any noteworthy advertising. All the devs and producers letters do is mention the "cost" of everything. It makes money sound like it is really tight for them.

According to their March 2011 annual earnings report, Square-Enix's total equity =

133,558 million yen, or $1,689,749,104.40

While there are certainly richer companies out there, and that total equals their entire company's equity, not the budget allocated to FFXIV, it is important to keep in mind that they have stated in interviews that they see the PS3 launch as their last chance make-or-break effort for XIV. With that in mind, I think it's fair to say that they could afford to throw some cash in the direction of the advertising team, if they really and truly want this title to succeed.

Afterthought: It also really wouldn't cost them anything other than the salary they already pay their community managers to do things like work on their social networking ads and by spending some time developing unique reward items for people who get their friends to buy the game, they've added an advertising method that pretty much sells itself through the network of existing players.

[Trigger]

All they they need to do is release an ad that some how bottles my feeling from the FFXI CGI opening, mix in the game's theme song "Answers", show a montage of battle and CGI scences and add a touch of that guys voice who does all the action moive commercials.

[Andrien]

Get Mr. T saying he is a "Hellsguard Roegadyn Mohawk."

Or something similar like this