Greatest Game Marketing Piece EVER: And it Wasn't Us Edition


The New York Times is the official newspaper of record of the United States. If I knew how to make an underline in blogger you would see this by the underline under the name The New York Times. In the second grade I learned it is the only newspaper title I am supposed to underline in a sentence. This past Sunday the Magazine's cover story was about The Beatles: Rock Band, and it was the greatest game coverage I have ever seen. For the first time, not a single one of the thousand words disparaged gamers, the game's creator was given credit and people like Paul McCartney explained to about 2 million mainstream readers, and a bunch more on line, why they would really like the game.

The article also explained how the game is actually contributing to the music business and consumers were willing to pay twice as much for the twice as many copies of Motley Crue's latest release - "twice" is of course relative and not absolute. All in all, a game with mainstream appeal, was promoted by a mainstream publication, to the mainstream. What a concept.

This is so obviously powerful, it may cause a collective head scratch with us all wondering why EA and/or Activision didn't do this before. Well, they didn't do it now. The closest the article comes to even mentioning the name of either company is:

The first Guitar Hero game came out in 2005. Two years later, Harmonix, now owned by MTV, introduced Rock Band. Together, Guitar Hero and Rock Band (now rival franchises owned by competing companies) have altered the way fans relate to music.


While I am confident MTV is not too happy with the erroneous reference regarding ownership, I am sure they are quite happy with the coverage, as they should be. They jumped into our business through acquisition of Harmonix and are now teaching us how to sell our product. We may be able to hold on to the core, but they are quickly and not quietly about to grab the rest of the world.




Comments

eyrie0 said…
What's incorrect about that statement? MTV/EA/Harmonix (Rock Band) *are* competing with Activision/Red Octane (Guitar Hero).
August 19, 2009 at 10:29 AM
Unknown said…
The article makes it sound like EA owns Rock Band and Activision owns Guitar Hero. EA does not own Rock Band.
August 19, 2009 at 10:40 AM
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