Hype machine: Halo 3 (updated)

We all know what hype is. It has been applied to everything. Video games, products, software, and heck, dare I say it, Presidents. Great hype confirms your product is going to sell well, but if your product have even a speck of ‘bad’ in it, it is going to crash. Hard.

Let’s look at our first case study, Halo 3.

halo3

Halo. The first console and first person shooter which worked (I know golden eye did it a few years before). The series which made the Xbox commercially viable. The series which brought online FPS to consoles. Halo 2 was the first game which has a cliffhanger as a ending, which pissed EVERYONE off.

The tagline “Finish the Fight” was coined from the final line of speech in the game (”Sir, finishing this fight”). Microsoft knew Halo 3 will be a cash cow from the start. It is estimated they spend around $40 million to market the game. Yes, forty million. Only Microsoft can spend money like that. We all seen the ads. On websites, the banners are field with halo. They indulged in making LIVE action teasers for a VIDEO game. Watch it here.

The game was excellent – most gamers can testify it to you. However, its did not cure cancer – like it did not stop global warming like it was hyped up to be. Microsoft had a excellent ad campaign.

It was too effective. This game was the holy grail of gaming until Call of Duty 4 launched.

Call of Duty took over a major portion of the gaming audience- as a equally good game with halo but boosted by the fact that it inched out in front of halo because of the hype. Halo was a near perfect. but the inch left to go was not there. It did not cure cancer. So when a equal, such as call of duty 4 comes along, they appear to be slightly better. The aftermath still rings in the gaming world today- Call of duty is the first game other then halo (which never lost long term first place) to sustain being first on Xbox Live for a extent of time (around a year?).

It has been so long- nearly 2 years ago, but this incident hit EVERYONE on the internet. Your little Timmy will see the ads from the massive campaign. Halo finally retaken the top played game on xbox live, and Call of duty is now on par with halo, and its Activision turn to propaganda us into thinking Call of Duty is the best. A game takes around 2 years to make. They release 1 every year ,with 2 different studios behind the franchise.

So, what did we learn? A hell lot of hype actually helps your competitor, and if its weak by just a bit, you are going to get shot down.

Come back next week when I discuss the hype of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

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