Feature: 'E3 Report: Smart Marketing - How an Intelligent Approach to Research Can Boost Your Bottom Line'

In today's feature covering the extensive developer sessions held at last week's E3 Expo, Azurelore Korrigan reports on a panel of videogame marketing experts which explored the misconceptions about "strategic information gathering", stressing that current videogame marketing "relies too much on gut instinct," a tendency that has "slowed the industry's progress in becoming a dominant medium."

In this excerpt, the panelists discuss some instances in which games didn't perform as expected:

"Naboa mentioned two recent instances where retailers were, as she put it, "too conservative"; Asphalt Urban GT and Lumines. "Retailers didn't want to stock them, but they sold great." Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was another problem. Ubisoft believed in it internally, and retailers liked it; consumers, however, "just didn't like the game."

Marketing surprises and disasters, Feinstein said, are usually the result of insufficient research. One recent mistake was in underestimating Need for Speed: Underground, which sold far more well than EA had expected. Had they done more research, Feinstein said, they could have predicted how well the game would be received and given it more support.

The Sims Online illustrated another problem; although they had done their "homework," and knew that response was tepid, Feinstein said they "didn't really listen" to the results. They were in love with the concept. Research is rarely wrong, she insisted. The main problem is that people don't always pay attention to it."

You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (free registration required.)