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The Marketing of OR/AS

DasManiac

The Charming Fool
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So with OR/AS it seems that the marketing has well revealed almost everything. I'm sure there are some surprises left in the game but I've really been displeased with how the marketing has been handled. With X/Y not as many Mega Evolutions were revealed ahead of time. I really don't think Mega Canerupt and Mega Sharpedo needed to be revealed. At first The Pokemon Company was hinting that Archie and Maxie could Mega Evolve but they purposely kept their key stones obscured. Then they just revealed Mega Camerupt and Sharpedo for no real reason. Was there really any need to do so?

I feel there was also no need to show Mega Pidgeot and Beedrill. I know they want to build up hype but some things should be left for players to find. For that matter Mega Diancie would have been a great surprise to save for Movie 17.

I know there isn't much to show off besides new Megas but not every month needs a reveal.

Are you pleased with the marketing so far? Do you wish things had been done differently?
 
I know there isn't much to show off besides new Megas but not every month needs a reveal.

Are you pleased with the marketing so far? Do you wish things had been done differently?

Every month does need a reveal, but it didn't have to be Mega's.

Looking back, here's what I would've done:

May - Announcement of ORAS, Brendan/May, starters, Groudon and Kyogre "forms" revealed

June - Team Aqua, Team Magma, Roxanne, Brawly, Wattson, Flannery, Sidney, Phoebe

July - Mega Swampert, Mega Sceptile, Mega Metagross, Steven, Prof. Birch

August - Secret Bases, Aarune, Contests, Lisia, Cosplay Pikachu

September - Mega Rayquaza, Primal Reversion, Wally, Mega Gallade

October - Norman, Winona, Tate/Liza, Wallace, Glacia, Drake, Mega Salamence

November - PokéNav+, Mega Lati@s, Soaring, Contest Master Juan (one can hope! :p )

It would've kept everyone guessing right until the end, and then Mega Diancie would've been revealed by the 17th movie, but not officially revealed by GameFreak until much later (like Mega Kangaskhan)
 
I think this different strategy might have to do with the fact that ORAS are remakes, unlike XY, which were new games. Due to this, they don't feel like they have as much to keep secret (and really there's less for them to 'reveal' given that we already know Hoenn).

If you recall, many of the official XY reveals had to do with the new (as in completely new, not just new megas) Pokemon, the region itself, the new characters / gym leaders etc. The point is that there's a lot less to 'reveal' with a remake because there's less new stuff. So I think in order to keep people talking about it and produce hype, they've had to reveal a lot of the megas already.
 
So with OR/AS it seems that the marketing has well revealed almost everything. I'm sure there are some surprises left in the game but I've really been displeased with how the marketing has been handled.

I touched on this in the related thread about attitudes towards ORAS spoilers:

I do hope that Game Freak rolls back the number of creatures they spoil during pre-release. Their relationship with CoroCoro has been, in my opinion, unhealthy in this regard. With XY, it's my understanding that they revealed all or nearly all of the basic forms of the Kalos Pokémon prior to the games' release. And as for ORAS ... (spoilers from datamining the demo)

They revealed practically every single Mega Evolution ahead of time. Like, if I'm not mistaken, there is one that they have yet to reveal. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevery other one they've already gone and revealed.
I understand that they do this to build up the hype pre-release, but the trade-off -- a diminished experience when actually playing the game -- isn't worth it in my opinion. You want to show us 10% of the basic forms of the new region before release? Fine. 20%? That's a bit much. 50%? Stop, what are you doing. Hopefully Gen VII won't mimic Gen VI in this regard. I have low expectations, but that gives Game Freak plenty of room to pleasantly surprise me.
But to answer your question, yes, I'm not happy with how much Game Freak reveals during pre-release. With Gold and Silver, the Internet was a different place back then, and it was easy to avoid spoilers from Japan without even trying to. I don't remember if I knew about the types ahead of time (I think I did? I think we all must have), but as far as creatures went, I think that all I knew about ahead of time were the ones revealed by the anime and movies (Ho-oh, Togepi, Marill, Snubbull, and maybe a few others), Ampharos, Lugia, and the two new Eeveelutions. Maaaaybe I knew about a couple of others? But I don't recall if I did or not. What I can tell you is, the spoilers were pretty much restricted to just that: a handful of creatures and the two new types. No spoilers about Johto laid out on the map. No spoilers about Tohjo Falls and getting to revisit Kanto. No spoilers about who was the new gym leader of Viridian City. And no spoilers about Red or his team. Everything was a surprise, and as you might imagine it made for a wonderful experience.

Contrast this with Black & White 2. They revealed both new gym leaders, the new villain, the new rival, the new protagonists, the changes to the map, the idea of Kyurem's power being used to glaciate Unova, the Pokémon World Tournament, and so much more. Sure, it built up hype! But then when you went to play BW2, all you really got to fall back on was the story. Thank God the story was one of the best (if not the best) in the main series! If it hadn't been for that, I think a heck of a lot of the game's appeal on a first playthrough would have been lost.

Or contrast this with X & Y. How many creatures did I say they revealed ahead of time for Johto? Maybe about ten or so. But with X and Y, where I made an effort to avoid spoilers, even I knew in advance about Mega Mewtwo, Sylveon, Gogoat, Noivern, and Helioptile from the anime; and even I knew about Mega Mawile, Mega Ampharos, Mega Absol, Pancham, and Fletchling from forumgoers' spoilers. Toss in Fennekin, Froakie, Chespin, Xerneas, and Yveltal from the January 2013 trailer and that's fifteen right there. For a guy trying to avoid spoilers. Part of it is the fault of the age we live in, but I know for a fact that prior to release there was a website (that I of course didn't check out) which allowed players to unmask every single basic form prior to the games' release. You can say what you like about people who don't want to be spoiled not using such sites, but when you're dealing with kids -- stupid, selfish, reckless kids -- it's inevitable that on a forum like Bulbagarden or Serebii, or that on a social media service like Twitter or Facebook, that you are going to end up spoiled to high heaven. I got lucky -- I don't use Facebook, I hardly use Twitter, and the places I tend to hang out are much smaller than BMG and have a much older userbase -- but if I were a regular BMG user then I am pretty sure that my only choices would have been to a) give up checking my Internet home for a whole year or else b) accept spoilers up the butt even though they ruin my experience of the game. It's a lose-lose situation, and I think that it's regrettable Game Freak forces it on us when they could so easily scale back the amount of spoilers they give during pre-release.

With Gen VII, I think that fair game for the company to spoil ahead of time in order to build up the hype train are things like:
  • the basic forms of the three starters
  • the real-life part of the world that the region is going to be based on
  • the box cover legendaries (they're on the frickin' box!)
  • the default designs available to the player for his/her character
Then if they want to, they can reveal one new basic form a month. That would still give fans who hunger for spoilers something to put in their bellies. But for the rest of us, it would spare us spoilers about the antagonist(s), about the cities' hallmarks, and about the majority of the new Pokémon in the game.

The biggest fix to the problem though is to not start the hype train so far in advance. Not only is it torture as a fan to have to wait nine months for the next Pokémon game ... not only does it get really old really fast when people try to talk about a game we don't even have yet for nine straight months ... but when you release the first information on a new game that far in advance, you kind of force yourself to have to release much more information than you would've otherwise had to. Because you can't release a trailer in January and then go silent until June. Fans would go crazy if you did that. Especially not after years of conditioning them to expect monthly information from CoroCoro. If you're going to keep your relationship up with CoroCoro, then you should start releasing the first information about a new game only four to five months before its release, Game Freak. It allows you to spoil a lot less while still delivering fans new information on a monthly basis.
 
I can't say I've enjoyed having new mega evolutions revealed every month, but then again waiting a long time for new info can be a bothersome drag.

As someone above pointed out, these are remakes, there's only a limited amount of new things to reveal. Besides, Game Freak have said that there's still quite a bit waiting to be discovered in the post-story play. Obviously keeping that a secret was higher on their priority list than keeping megas secret.
 
I'm not liking the overemphasis on Mega Evolutions, but I think part of that is just that they don't have anything else they want to show. Still they probably could've toned it down a bit and maybe show off only one or two a month.

Frankly though, I would've just put more stuff in the game to begin with. A Hoenn Dex expansion, coverage on the Regis, and maybe some more features to show off (as well as spreading out the Pokenav Plus and Soaring reveals to early in the cycle) would've helped make the news cycle more fresh and exciting.
 
Well, let's analyze:

-The games were revelated a random day, which led a lot of people to think that the games weren't planeated to be released this november, yet others get very hyped due to the few things they reveleated left room for lots of speculation.
-From June to august, they focused on saying "It's ruby and sapphire with sightly updated features and new megaevolutions and a cute Pikachu!", which hyped a lot of people who had doubts that this features won't be coming back but also left some people disappointed due to the lack of 100% new features and new Pokedex.
-Honorable menton to the E3, which showed a trailer. It was "enough".
-In september and october they are focusing on more Megaevolutions and other features, and definetely raised the bar when compared to june-august information.
-When the release date was reveleated, Americans were happy as they got the same date of Japan and Europeans were very angry, and I thought that their rage was going to be enough for Nintendo to change it, yet it wasn't, and It looks that most europeans will buy the game anyway.

However, the demo has been a defining point in the games marketing, even more than the release date:
First, it isn't exclusive to the eShop, and each country has their own methods. Most of them including going to a place, and the others included participating acctively in a site. Most of people were angry at it, due to the fact that they were going the hard way for no reason.
And the most important thing of all is the leaks. Really, Nintendo? You thought that people weren't be able to hack the game and find that EVERYTHING about the game that will launch in one month was programmed in it? They have acknowledged that people have hacked the games in the past, why not spend a few more bucks and programate the demo separately to prevent this?

It doesn't matter if you only looked at the shiny megaevolutions or if you have read all the pastebins, you know what to expect from the game.
The only way Nintendo could regain the confidence is revealing a new Megaevolution in the next few days, and convincing us that was hasn't been leaked is wortwhile to be hyped again.
 
They revealed secret bases through a random PR, and left soaring and the pokenav+ for the month before release. While revealing nearly 20 megas and leaving an unfinished feel to tge game. I think that's telling enough.
 
I prefer the way they did it, surprises are cool and all but the best way to keep up interest is frequent updates.

WWE game fans for example have been starved, there was little info until two weeks ago and the games is out this month.
 
They also left the potential derailing remarks about customisation and updates until a month before release in a single Japanese-only video. While I would say that's technically smart, it's rather dishonest, too.

EDIT: And yes, I agree with the remark about their astonishing naivete on the matter of hacking, since now those who know where to look know a good 70% of the game contents. Did Masuda and the development team just get lobotomies or something recently?
 
They also left the potential derailing remarks about customisation and updates until a month before release in a single Japanese-only video. While I would say that's technically smart, it's rather dishonest, too.

EDIT: And yes, I agree with the remark about their astonishing naivete on the matter of hacking, since now those who know where to look know a good 70% of the game contents. Did Masuda and the development team just get lobotomies or something recently?

They know people hack the games, but they don't care, as by the time people have hacked the games, they've either already been released (XY) or they've already had their entire marketing ploy set in stone (OR/AS)
 
Like others in this thread, I really don’t like it that so many mega evolutions were revealed. It’s really tiring to wait for information every month and just get more mega evolutions every time. I don't mind mega evolution, but right now they make it look like it's the most important thing of the game. Furthermore, I’m very sad that the megas for Camerupt, Sharpedo and Metagross were revealed as they would have been a nice surprise to see ingame when you battle Maxie/Archie and Steven. I feel like there's hardly any surprises left now.

I see people saying that because these are remakes there isn’t much new information to reveal. And even though that’s true, didn’t the same go for HGSS? Mega evolution didn’t exist back then, but I can remember there was still enough info every month to hype about. If they were able to keep HGSS exciting for months without mega evos, then why can’t they do it for ORAS?
 
I think GameFreak intentionally revealed so many megas for ORAS because there are a lot more that they aren't showing us. They showed a handful of Megas in XY before it came out, but then players started finding so much more when it was finally released. I'm probably being optimistic, but maybe this batch we've gotten is just a small handful compared to what we're going to find when we finally get it.

As far as the ORAS marketing campaign as a whole, GF knows exactly what they're doing. They've been crafting the franchise's reputation for over 15 years. Where other franchises have burnt out or faded into obscurity, Pokemon has reached the point where any Pokemon news is good news, whether that's Mega Evolutions, new characters, new items, etc. Hell, they're probably just throwing darts at a board when it's time for CoroCoro.
 
While this year has been one long hype train from one month to the next, it's been fun. As someone said, keeping interest piqued in a game is much more efficient and easily done when you're constantly pumping out something new every month. While this has left bleak hopes on unrevealed mega evolutions, the story changes remain a mystery as does the post-game content. Game Freak have said there is an optional quest involving Rayquaza, and that there is a lot to do once the story is over, but that's it. Nothing solid.

While they have heaved a lot out before release, I'd say they still have some aces up their sleeve. That may sound naive, but Nintendo have been in this business a long time. They know what they're doing. If giving out lots of information before release is what they think is a good idea, then it likely is, even if some don't like it. With me, I have to say it's worked. Knowing more megas and stuff like Soaring & the new Nav features makes me even more eager to play.
 
The thing is, to me it seems that GF doesn't know what they really want to achieve with ORAS.
First they want to promote it by stuffing all kinds of Legendaries and "exclusive" megas into it, but then they limit it with only XY/ORAS pokemon in rating battles and no patches. Why is that needed, why are they holding back...?
 
The thing is, to me it seems that GF doesn't know what they really want to achieve with ORAS.
First they want to promote it by stuffing all kinds of Legendaries and "exclusive" megas into it, but then they limit it with only XY/ORAS pokemon in rating battles and no patches. Why is that needed, why are they holding back...?

The only argument I can think of to explain their rather idiotic behaviour is to make an excuse to keep XY on the market. But even then, they could have done that WITH a patched XY anyway because the mega stones would still be exclusive to ORAS and have to be traded.
 
One thing that I had thought of that, that was I displeased with was revealing Steven Stone has a shiny Metagross and that it Mega Evolves. There was no reason to reveal either of those things prior to release. We should have been surprised either in the demo or in the main game. It would have made for one heck of a surprise.
 
Please note: The thread is from 9 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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