Square-Enix, WORST MARKETING EVER... For the love of God, WHY?!

[Gramul]

hello mr. peach pits and sour grapes if you hate se so much go play a game from another game company
do you wake up in the morn ever have a smile on your face or is it always a frown man your toung must get tired ppl like you yes you always turn an wet dream into an nightmare

...who...are you?

[dragorian]

can you guys do sumtin else than bitching all the time?in german forums we dont get everything up to date, way later than english forums. just gotta be a lil more patient. im pretty sure theres gonna be a better video of the gameplay coming up...

totaly agrre with you

[dragorian]

...who...are you?

who am well who am i not im not a whiner,complainer unlike you iv been a fan of se since 1986 and by far yosh is do a great job if you and ppl like you think u can make a game better than 14 and have it out b4 a realm reborn goes live by all mean do it oh w8 you cant can you and you and others wonder why they dont post much info on lodestone because ppl like you allways complain about it and dont appreciate what they have done so they are like why bother if they are going to get dised constantly

[Gramul]

who am well who am i not im not a whiner,complainer unlike you iv been a fan of se since 1986 and by far yosh is do a great job if you and ppl like you think u can make a game better than 14 and have it out b4 a realm reborn goes live by all mean do it oh w8 you cant can you and you and others wonder why they dont post much info on lodestone because ppl like you allways complain about it and dont appreciate what they have done so they are like why bother if they are going to get dised constantly

You don't type or behave like someone over 26. Even if English isn't your first language, you should know better than to just repeat the same post to people sarcastically barking old phrases.

Being a fan doesn't mean eagerly downing anything a company serves you without any mind.
That's being a fanatic.

Square eagerly asked us to inform them of our views and opinions. If they happen to be negative, I try my best to clearly explain why so they don't run the risk of disappointing others. I do it to help them grow. Not praise them to death.

[Cynthis]

I went to look at the A realm Reborn website this morning to have a closer look at all the new screenshots and videos and found....nothing new. If I designed a new webpage to promote my product I would make sure to, you know, use it...

I am beginning to think they are deliberately holding back on information because 2.0 is going to be seriously delayed so they don't want to start hyping it too early.

[dragorian]

I went to look at the A realm Reborn website this morning to have a closer look at all the new screenshots and videos and found....nothing new. If I designed a new webpage to promote my product I would make sure to, you know, use it...

I am beginning to think they are deliberately holding back on information because 2.0 is going to be seriously delayed so they don't want to start hyping it too early.

well if it is delyed then it is fine they are limitation's on how much you can do when remaking a game in only a years time
thing's on this scale cant be hurried

[Gukswar]

SE is cheap- they use cheap system why would they spend money on marketing when they can have free Facebook accounts.
Use cheap stuff charge cheap monthly payment- be cheap Bottom line ;P

[Rannie]

who am well who am i not im not a whiner,complainer unlike you iv been a fan of se since 1986 and by far yosh is do a great job if you and ppl like you think u can make a game better than 14 and have it out b4 a realm reborn goes live by all mean do it oh w8 you cant can you and you and others wonder why they dont post much info on lodestone because ppl like you allways complain about it and dont appreciate what they have done so they are like why bother if they are going to get dised constantly

o.O sorry but which were you a fan of Squaresoft or Enix back in 1986 because se didn't exist back then as one single element it was after april 1st of 2003 that Squaresoft and Enix became Square enix. so Technically you couldn't have been a fan of se since 1986 since they were two separate companies.

[Lux_Rayna]

Didn't you once claim it was "ludicrously expensive" for SE to advertise overseas? I'm not sure if you're from the United States, but SE commercials play all the time in the weeks leading up to and after big releases. Games like FFXIII and it's sequel, anything Kingdom Hearts, Deus Ex, yadda yadda, are staples of networks like USA, SyFy and Spike TV, and SE has gone as far as actually being the primary sponsor for major sports events and pro wrestling PPVs.

Maybe it's different in Europe, but here? You see SE all the time on TV, it's probably one of the more common gaming companies you see advertising. Additionally, SE made a significant profit last year; they're not in any sort of dire straights, and in fact are doing quite while right now. I'm just not sure where you have this idea that SE can't afford to advertise, or why you think it's prohibitively expensive to advertise.

*sigh* Because they are making XXIV 2.0 "in the hole". Let's look at XIV first. XIV had so much devoted to development, so much devoted to advertising, and so much in sales. It flopped. So basically most of those advertising dollars went down the drain, and even worse, the negative PR can hurt future sales. Now to remedy this, they more or less had to build a new game from the ground up. That is a LOOOOOOT of money. Period. SE has more to make than just MMORPGS you know? Their company is rather humongous after all. Now when FFXI flopped SE's share prices dropped a LOT, relatively speaking. And they've yet to recover from that btw. Now when share prices drop like that its bad, because that means investors are taking their money out of your company. And that sucks. You need them, thats how capitalism works.

Now understanding this situation, what sense does it make to dump a whole bunch of money into recreating the same game..only to pump just as much money into advertising? Not a lot, considering you're already in negative dollar territory from the last failure of a launch. The goal is to make your profit margin as wide as possible after all. FFXIV 2.0 is already going to have to do pretty phenomenally well to make up for those huge losses. Dumping a bunch into an ad campaign will only make it more difficult for 2.0 to turn green (make up all that lost ground). Especially when your audience doesn't trust you anyway, that means the ads will be less effective.

Clearly the best thing for 2.0 is word of mouth. One, people will believe word of mouth over any ad. Two, word of mouth happens to be free. Three, word of mouth is easy to generate when you already have a core playerbase. Four, small-scale gaming conventions are huuuuge because they are relatively inexpensive, feature quite a lot of people, and any gaming mag/website worth their salt will probably cover it. In other words, they can generate quite the worldwide buzz without having to run overpriced 30-sec spots on international television.

And yes, advertising in the US is very expensive. Obviously Square Enix can afford to do it, but from a business standpoint it wouldn't make much sense in all cases. As far as 2.0 goes, it doesn't make any damn sense at all, which is why they aren't doing it. They will probably run some ads, but not until word of mouth has done its job..and even when it has I highly doubt it will be extensive. It would just be a waste of money, which they definitely do NOT want to do considering how much money XIV lost the company as a whole. I know I sound like SE is some poor little bankrupt company, but that is how they will look at it...every dollar spent needs to have a very definite purpose. If you don't need to spend the money on an ad campaign, don't. The less you advertise, the wider your potential profit margins. Course you need advertising to meet those margins. The best compromise is to use the best advertising available for the cheapest price possible. And here we have word of mouth (best) for absolutely free (or rather cheap). Word?

EDIT: Long story short, they will have to run some ads for the casual disconnected gamer. Obviously. I'm just arguing it does not need to be extensive, and most of their advertising will not come from that.

EDIT2: And honestly I can count the number of SE ads i've seen on one hand. For comparison, I've seen more Star Wars The Old Republic adds in one year than I have seen of SE in my lifetime. Course its probably just the channels im watching. Relatively speaking, SE does not advertise in the US much at all. Just before and after big releases sounds about right to me, which is what I expect for XIV 2.0. But that's not very much, relatively speaking.

[kurokawa]

Thanks for that Snowy... and to the other peeps on the previous pages, I'd say exercising patience at this point is a great start... and to be honest, the amount of material shown so far is a very decent amount.

First off, remember that the whole presentation is still only in its first day... secondly, there is already a presentation video of the Alpha build; thirdly, there is a fair amount of concept art and in-game renderings which will obviously improve even more by the Beta.

Fourth, there is a huge crowd at this convention... (almost 200k+, some actually tented up outside the premises)...who are already buzzing GREAT things about this game online...





Finally, Nova Crystalis is on twitter to take your questions to Yoshi

Marketing this game financially right now is like playing your very best game of poker... you CANNOT expect Yoshi to give everything away all in one sitting. He has already mentioned that he will be giving information gradually from here on out, which is a VERY sensible plan. One must never play their best hand all at once... always leave something wicked up your sleeve.

You must understand that Square Enix has a potential billion-dollar franchise in FFXIV: ARR and Im certain their PR department will take advantage of the dates they have ahead of them.

There's the 25th Anniversary on September 1st... and then there is the Tokyo Game Show three weeks later (right on SE's home turf)... and three weeks after maybe they might even attend the Game Developers Conference Online (October 9th to 11th, 2012), who knows. Need I spell it out for you any further?

Like I said... this time, they know what they're doing...I'm prepared to be amazed.

Thankyou sir, well put.