Is The PS Vita’s Marketing Really On Target?
A little bird tells me...
Published: 9:00, 13/02/2012 by Alex C [nofi].
33The PS Vita’s out on the 22nd of February. Just over a week. It costs around £225 for the Wi-Fi version and you need a memory card.
There, I’ve done it. It’s not that hard. But, frustratingly, it appears that Sony are unwilling to get this device where it needs to be to actually get that information out there to the public. Sure, TSA readers and hardcore gamers will probably be switched on to the vital statistics of the new handheld, but Joe Public? I wouldn’t have thought so, and Sony are running out of time to get this thing pre-ordered.
Let’s start with the positives. Vita Rooms was a brilliant idea and from what I could see it works well enough – everyone that attended the Glasgow launch event loved it (including us) and the buzz about the system was palpable.
Showing off the Vita and the games alongside a knowledgeable member of staff is crucial, but the relaxed atmosphere and wide array of titles was conclusively positive.
Blair playing Rayman at the (excellent) Vita Rooms event.
In terms of magazine coverage, most of what I’ve seen standing out has been in MCV (and indeed, on their site) which is great for those of us in the industry (MCV’s a trade magazine) but I’ll wager most gamers haven’t even heard of the magazine, let alone subscribe to it. And as magazine readership dwindles, is this really a medium that still represents best value for money for advertising buyers?
Where are the adverts on the sides of buses? Where are the advertising boards around the football matches? Big pre-roll ads in cinemas like Sony did with Gran Turismo 3? Global, non-specialist magazines like Wired, or Time? Where’re the TV adverts? The only thing I’ve seen on TV was a fumbled, embarrassing attempt at showing off Reality Fighters, arguably the Vita’s poorest game, on Something For The Weekend. Hardly inspiring.
Do most people know when the Vita’s coming out? Do they know the games can be bought via the PSN? Do they know which games need a memory card?
Apparently SCEA are spending $50 million on advertising the Vita, with John Koller saying the target for the ads will be “men in their 20s who play video games eight hours a week or more and own a PlayStation 3 console.” You could argue that this market is those that are most likely to already know about the Vita, although I’m happy enough to concede that all marketing has to have an initial focus – hopefully it’s expanded to a wider audience later.
There’s a theme, too, throughout the campaign – “Never Stop Playing” – and, and you might expect, a hashtag – ‘#gamechanger‘ – it’s a neat idea, but try searching for that and see what you get just now.
And then, back to Europe, there’s the quirky relationship between the SCEE PlayStation Blog and the Official PlayStation Magazine UK website. The former’s run by Sony Europe and the latter is run as an offshoot of the Future Publishing published OPM mag. But there’s an odd amount of overlap between the two, with tweets from the Blog account regularly pushing plenty of readers the way of OPM (and OPM doing the same with weekly round-ups).
Sadly, we didn’t get a mention at all from either of the main PlayStation accounts. We tried, and we’d have thought the followers of the Blog twitter account would appreciate some solid, hard evidence about game prices, download sizes and honest thoughts, but apparently not. In fact, it looks like the @PlayStationEU account doesn’t link to anywhere apart from the Blog and OPM.
Or, indeed, reply to any questions. This, as any social media specialist will tell you, is not really considered good practice, and is hardly interactive or inviting.
In fact, it appears from the stream that for the last few weeks all that account has done is fire out links, and ignore any incoming questions. Perhaps there’s not someone employed to manage the account, but with 200,000 followers there damned well should be – the last time there was a retweet or reply of any kind was on the 13th of January, and that was to @psaccess, another affiliated account.
We’d be responding to questions, inviting people to ask us stuff they didn’t know, and to gather valuable marketing information. We’d be pushing pre-order links (especially given recent rumours about GAME’s stock levels) and – you know – links to the community sites like TSA that give up lots of time to collate all this data.
I see so many unanswered questions and so much confusion around the web. On forums, in comments – people don’t know everything they should know a week away from launch, and it’s frustrating. We’re not here to do Sony’s work on this, but it feels like it’s the community and sites like ours (of course, there are many sites doing what we do) responding to queries and filling the gaps that should – in my opinion – already be filled in.
I’m happy to be proved wrong, but all this isn’t really working for me just yet. The Vita is a wonderful machine, don’t mess this one up, Sony…
This is a personal blog and the views do not necessarily represent those of anyone else.
Disclaimer: All comments are the opinion and responsibility of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis. You must read and agree to our terms before reading and commenting on this site. User comments are not always moderated by TheSixthAxis.
« Previous 1 2
« Previous 1 2
Most Comments This Week
- Gaikai’s Streaming – Does This Mean No PS4? [65]
- PSN Store Update: 23/05/12 [55]
- First Party Vita Games Drop To £12 On PSN [52]
- PSN Store Hit With 80023163 Errors [51]
- Is Something Big Coming To PlayStation Plus Soon? [50]
- “Leap” Motion Controller Could Revolutionise Gaming [43]
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier PS3 Install Is Huge [42]
- Australian & New Zealand D3 Players Suffer High Ping Rates [41]
- Sony Files Patent For Game-Interrupting Soda Adverts [40]
- Ghost Recon Future Soldier Review (PS3, Xbox 360) [39]
Latest Reader Comments
- Gaikai’s Streaming – Does This Mean No PS4?
-
Sunday Thoughts: Leaking E3 And Ethical Debates
- 19:58 Lymmusic: Yousa point is a well seen….
- 19:55 nofi: Without going into why, we had to change a little bit of this article at the last minute. It’s nothing...
- 18:49 hazelam: interesting debate. most sites would run with any story if they thought it would get them traffick, and...
- 18:28 hazelam: i’d agree with the least fanboyish, but respectable? can any community that has Tuffcub in it ever be...
- 18:12 TSBonyman: Integrity, yep that’s another reason i stick around here! I’m feeling the E3 anticipation...
- New Hardware, New Plus: All Eyes On Sony This E3
- E3 2012: New “Tomb Raider” Teaser Shows Off Some Lovely Visuals
- Meet the Reader: KAMIKAZE-UK
TSAtv: Original Video Content
Batman book review
Kris Dancing, again
Joe Danger interview
Sonic Generations
13/02/2012 at 09:48
Member since: Feb 2012
I think its a great idea to have a soft launch, I don’t see why if stock is limited, and pre-orders are supposedly nearly all allocated, why spend your budget at launch. To be honest, August to December will be Vita’s most important time this year, with Christmas and its competition against the 3DS, and with no major 3DS releases coming out immediately (I may be wrong on this), with the free press the Vita is getting through traditional media outlets about the launch (as usual), the blog, social media, gaming websites and youtube, I don’t see a need to massively push the console at this time.
I do have to agree with uncleniccius, the lack of information about some features (e.g. UMD Passport, and PS Store pricing) isn’t great.
13/02/2012 at 10:07
Member since: Feb 2009
I would expect a large amount if the budget went on putting vita in to stores to try out. Every time I go into game or generation someone is already on the machine and sometimes there’s a queue.
13/02/2012 at 15:08
Member since: Oct 2009
same here with massive smiles on there faces.
13/02/2012 at 11:05
Member since: Aug 2008
I just Googled “Playstation Vita”
Top 5 reults that AREN’T shopping, 1)Wikipedia 2)Official Playstation Site (tiny review) 3)PC Adviser 4)Techradar 5) Expert reviews. At the bottom of the page there are two really freak sites called mediakick and sonyfanatic???? ;)
Can’t you guys play with Google analysis and get yourself bumped?
13/02/2012 at 13:06
Member since: Forever
Hey, who are you calling freaky?!
- Editor of MediaKick
13/02/2012 at 13:08
Member since: Forever
Good god. *Who* not bloody why.
13/02/2012 at 15:15
Member since: Forever
it’s okay Davs, I fixed it for you…
- Editor of TSA ;)
13/02/2012 at 12:05
Member since: Apr 2009
Yup.
I’m incredibly excited about the Vita, but half my friends didn’t even realise this was PSP2, but just another revision (and I’m only talking about my Playstation gaming friends here).
Seen no ads other than posters in Game.
Absolute joke, it’ll tank if they don’t tell people about it.
Is this what happened in Japan?
13/02/2012 at 13:37
Member since: May 2009
The Vita rooms might have been good but there wasn’t enough around the country. I think the nearest to Newcastle (closest city to me) was Glasgow, about 100 miles away.
13/02/2012 at 15:06
Member since: Oct 2009
the amount of people who were using it in game looked like a good thing to me.
14/02/2012 at 05:44
Member since: Jan 2010
I think it will sell itself. Hear me out…
Sony have said the best way to understand the real qualities of Vita is to use it, the problem is that unlike the ipad with it’s (at the time) unique look or the DS with it’s clam shell design, the Vita really just looks like a PSP. Even big glossy photos in ads or on bill boards don’t necessarily catch gamers attention as at first glance you just a PSP and dismiss it.
For those of us that have read the tech specs we know it’s an amazing piece of kit and can see it’s potential, but for most people the biggest selling point will be to see one in a store, or in their friends hands, or over someone’s shoulder on the bus. I think Sony know that, and they want to execute the bulk of their advertising campaign when these things are already on the street and available in stores for people to actually go and experience.
In a nut shell, expect a big advertising push in the coming months – and more importantly expect the word of mouth to help sell push sales onwards and upwards. I think Sony have good reason to be confident in both the hardware and their software lineup and if they’re banking on satisfied customers spreading the cheer it’s probably a very safe bet and significantly cheaper than forcing the issue (ala the $500 million advertising efforts of Kinect) and then fading out when customers discover there is no substance to the hype.
If you build it, they will come.