14 DAY TRIAL // It's hard to convince gamers a particular title is worth their money but one avenue of promotion that publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts are pursuing more and more these days is television advertising, with ads for Dante's Inferno, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 getting spots during high profile events.
But at least one videogame executive believes advertising on TV is not a good idea for video games because those who are interested in playing them are usually not too fond of the old, boring, non-interactive TV set.
Danny Bilson, who is the vice president of core games at publisher THQ, revealed, “I’m playing games, I’m not watching TV. You know where I want to market? I want to market on Xbox Live. I want to market on PSN, because every night that’s the switch I turn on at my house. And that front end comes, and those windows come, and all that marketing’s getting right to me because I’m a core gamer. That’s where I want to invest. Television is a big question mark for me.”
Bilson is saying television advertising is too expensive for videogames, with a handful of spots having less of an impact than direct to consumer efforts or web-based initiatives. The THQ executive adds that upcoming titles from his company, like the shooter Homefront, will not be on TV in a big way but will rely on other channels. Homefront is developed by Kaos Studios and tells the story of an American citizen militia fighting against the North Korean occupation of the mainland.
As videogames aim to attract more and more players, they need to use more mainstream promotion channels. Unfortunately, television advertising is quite high and marketing costs tend to be an ever growing expense for publishers.