Vision doesn't sell copies ?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/96/19

After reading this article from Escapist magazine, I'm a little disapointed in the way they reflected on the subject. In fact, they only seem to say that people don't care about good reviews for new products, but will only buy old licenses that they know of.

I believe that it's an awful way to see the issue!

It's true that most mainstream gamers or people who play casually won't go on ign,gamespot and such websites to see the reviews...most people don't care about those. These websites are more addressed to hardcore gamers and geeks ( sorry but that's kinda true ).

Do you really think parents will go on these sites before buying a game ?

I believe that great games with new creative visions will appeal to a lot of people rather than an old license that sold x number of copies , for example Splinter Cell will sell mostly to hardcore gamers or people who have played all previous games of the series. Why ? Because new players will be afraid to play this complex game which evolved since the first one. So the number of copies sold will diminish after each iteration since some of those players will want something new.

Then, why doesn't great vision sell copies ?

I believe it's the way the publishers/developpers advertise their game. Usually developpers will present a trailer of their game to show off the potential, but the problem... it's shown on a website again, gametrailers, which is only seen by a bunch of hardcore gamers.

The games will also be advertised in specialized gaming magazines which is only bought by hardcore gamers!

We should take a look at how the movie industry advertise their movies. Movie trailers are shown on TV, in a movie theater in front of hundreds of people at each showing and in most talk shows! So the trailers are seen by a lot of different kinds of people that wouldn't have known about horror movie x, for example, if they don't usually care about those, but now they know that the movie is coming out and can talk about it to other people!

Nintendo took this approach for their new Wii console and it worked ... everybody buys the console even non-gamers. They show the Wii play commercial on all tv channels, in movie theaters before all the best movies between two movie trailers and they talk about it everywhere.

So the main issue for the videogame industry, I believe, is that marketing department should rethink the way they advertised our games. They should put more money and time on the games that bring something new than older licenses that will sell anyway because they are advertised with trailers on specialized websites.

Let's think about it before saying that vision doesn't sell! Let's hope the industry can find new ways to present the games that we really care about :)