[–] WedgeSerif 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The majority of gamers aren't "core" gamers; they're the "filthy casuals." I mean, compare the 30-million-strong player base of Hearthstone to the number of people you see in the tournaments. Tens of millions of those players are just fun, casual folks. This is true for the Calls of Duty, the Assassins' Creeds, the Battlefields, the Madden NFLs, and so on. In other words, the majority of videogame buyers/players don't hang out on NeoGAF or the Steam Forums. They rely on advertising in mainstream media outlets to learn about new games. Publishers need broad-spectrum advertising to sell their games profitably.
As far as making a "better" game goes, it's not so easy. Mass Effect: Andromeda had a much bigger budget than NieR:Automata, but the animations in NieR are WAY better than ME:A. I recently read that the ME:A developers spent about a year trying to make procedural planet generation work, but they ended up scrapping the idea. That's a year of development wasted, and it shows in the final product. That wasted year had nothing to do with an advertising budget; it had everything to do with poor design decisions.
No, ME:A's issue was lack of talent. If they would have hired a more expensive set of programmers, it could have worked. There are plenty of developers that have managed what they were setting out to do.
And for those casuals. They know a new CoD, BF, AC is coming out. There's no need for 6 TV ads on a single episode of a show. With a 150 million dollar ad budget, you'd get an entire team worth of developers to make the game that much better.
[–] Namrok 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I think this would only be true if no publisher advertised. If there were no advertising for anything shifting perceptions, the cream would naturally rise to the top.
Which isn't to say there can't be a breakout hit that happens completely without (paid) advertising. But there is always going to have to be some signal boosting through free advertising for any game to break out. Word of mouth, lets players, games media. It's going to need free press one way or another.
[–] Browngaijin 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
I would have to respectfully disagree. While the methods of getting the word out about a game habe become cheaper, PR is an important investment.
[–] Thissandwich 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I agree with you. I'm certain lack of advertising is what killed sega. After the genesis, they had very little advertising. I can only remember one Dreamcast commercial, and I don't remember any for the Saturn.
[–] Alpha_Machine ago (edited ago)
Except the big money in marketing isn't aimed at the audience of Youtubers, it's for advertisements on television, physical ones in public, etc. The people who watch gaming youtubers are far more likely to hear about the game either through forums, gaming sites, etc. The point of marketing would be to aim at those who don't watch gaming videos on youtube.
I suspect the amount of marketing money spent on youtubers/twitch streamers is very small in comparison to everything else.
[–] Diathorus 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
That's a popular theory and one that I feel like is probably true. But the thing is the average consumer doesn't have the data they have and are just looking at this from 1 perspective so gotta take that into account.
Still if there is one thing I'm certain off is that putting huge amounts of money in advertising a buggy and messy turd like Andromeda is basically like flushing it in a toilet. It barely guarantees some release sales and will in the end just make making fun of it all the more satisfying.
[–] Aged 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Using pop songs in a trailer of a videogame is dumb, specially when you already have a soundtrack composed and completed years ago - yup, Hideo Kojima and Square Enix, I'm talking about you guys. The money to license it isn't worthy it.