Marketing Let Enslaved Down
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Speaking with Gamasutra, Tameem Antoniades, Chief Creative Officer of Ninja Theory, explains that a new IP needs a big sales push to have a chance at being seen, and bought, by consumers. ”But it needed support, it needed a drive, a big push, and I don’t think it necessarily got that. I really kind of hate it when people make, say, ‘Oh, marketing didn’t support it,’ but a new IP needs to be visible, and I didn’t feel like it was. A lot of people still even haven’t heard of the game.” He also expressed confusion at seeing Publishers under-spend on marketing for new IP’s. ”Why bet on triple-A if you’re not going to spend for triple-A? You can’t have it both ways. But, you know, I think we’re proud as a team that we’ve got the game done, we got it on time. We thought that we did our job.” Enslaved received generally positive reviews, and was more or less enjoyed by the people who bought the game. However it didn’t sell as many copies as hoped, selling 730,000 units as of April this year. Ninja Theory is currently working on the new Devil May Cry game for Capcom. While I don’t think marketing was the only reason the game faltered, I’m sure it played a big role. I’m sure the pricing played a large part as well. After all, who’d be willing to spend $60(or more, for people outside of the US) on a game they haven’t heard or know nothing about? Via – Eurogamer |
these people are so single minded man!
there was nothing wrong with the marketing campaign man!
the game just failed because it was released at the wrong time.
During Oct- time of Castlevania lords of shadow and some other game I think it was Black Ops.
Majorities who played the demo were let down by-
*animation frame when moving character
*weak combat system
*weak platforming that was so easy and worthless!
the game was heavily marketed here in UK man.
They should just face it and accept it. The game wasn’t good enough for majorities standard.
You really wanted to make Journey to the West type of game, they should have used Anarchy Studio’s Xin comic.
Really? Well, that’s interesting. In the US it wasn’t really marketed much at all. I think I saw a couple of internet ads and maybe one commercial, but that was it.
I also agree that it was a bad time to release it. Just the holiday season in general. Charging $60 for a new IP that was barely marketed in the US when lots of other high-profile games are getting released probably isn’t the best idea.
I thought the game wasn’t THAT bad. I think my overall issue with it is that it had very little lasting impact. Once the game was over, it was on to the next. It’s hard to believe how many support articles there are for this game. Which is one of the reasons I bought it. Hopefully Ninja Theory finally get their big break w/ DmC, unfortunately I don’t plan on buying it because I lost interest in that franchise half way through the DMC2..I don’t even think I got around to playing as Dante. I heard DMC3 redeemed this, but it was too late. Back on topic, Heavenly Sword was awesome. Enslaved was good, but very minimal lasting appeal. And DmC may be just what this company needed.
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Enslaved would have sold twice what it did if it had released in the Spring. inFamous and Prototype did really well then, even though they weren’t *too* heavily marketed. Enslaved failed because everyone was already tapped out buying other games.
To be fair, though, the game was a bit of a mess and lightweight besides.