AdventureRacing said:
The first didn't have much marketing at all. It sold mostly on word of mouth.
It's always funny when people make out like halo only sells because of advertising.
I also find it kind of ridiculous when people excuse a game selling less than expected because it didn't have good enough marketing. A pretty relevant example is KZ2. People complained how poorly it was marketed when it really got a lot more advertising than the original halo, and was on a larger userbase.
In fact this has been a common sentiment this gen and its kind of annoying.
To be a bit fair, Halo 1 was a Xbox launch title, which probably helped the sales and awareness of the game, so maybe Halo 1 didnt need to much adverticing on it's own. Killzone 2 did have the advantage of a bigger installbase compared to the Xbox installbase when Halo 1 was released though, that is true as you say, i agree, but i wonder how Killzone 2 would have sold if it was a launch game like Halo 1 was, and if Killzone 2 was the only first person shooter that was released on the launch date and not being released at the same time as Resistance 1 (which was a PS3 launch title) was released.
Being a launch game doesnt necessarily means that a game will sell great though, but at a consoles launch there are usually less games to chose from compared to when a console have been out on the market for a few years, so i would guess that launch games can have a better chance to sell well (at least to begin with) compared to games that are released later into a console lifecycle.
When Halo was released back in 2001/2002, i dont think that first person shooters were that common on consoles as it is today, at least from my knowledge, so there were less competition in the FPS genre back then. When Killzone 2 was released, there were already many popular FPS on the market, which ment more competition in the FPS genre. I wonder how much Halo would have sold if it was released in these days for the first time. It might have sold just as well as it did being released back in 2001/2002 though
Of course these arent the only reasons why Halo become popular and sold well. If the game was bad, i dont think that being a launch game etc. would have helped that much, because then word to mouth about being a bad game might have hurt the sales. Halo is a good game, and i belive that this is the main reason why it sold so much, which lead to good word to mouth as you said, so i totally agree that Halo isnt popular just because of the adverticing.
I am not trying to downplay Halo's success at all just to underline that. I am just wondering if Halo 1 being a launch title and that there werent that much competition in the FPS genre (at least compared to how the competition is in the FPS genre in these days) might have helped Halo 1, so people got more aware that the game excisted. And i am not saying that Halo 1 had all the advantages (as in being a launch game etc.) over Killzone 2 just to underline that as well. Halo 1's sales success is definitly not something that i would downplay at all. I belive that Halo 1's sales success happend mainly because the game was/is good and that many people liked it.
I dont think that people buys a game mainly because there are much adverticing about the game, but i do think that little or no adverticing can hurt the sales compared to if there is adverticing, especially in these days when gaming in general is pretty big and when many games are being released, which means more competition. People in general might not be that aware of a game, especially if the game is a new IP, if there arent much or no adverticing of a game.
But i fully agree that little or no adverticing isnt necessarily the only or the main thing that decides if a game ends up selling good or not. Good word to mouth might be a very good thing to increase the awareness and increase the sales of a game indeed, i agree, but i wonder if word to mouth might unfortunately not always be able to reach a lot of people even if a game should be very good :\
I think that adverticing can be of a good help to make people aware that a game excist, but adverticing isnt the only thing that matters if a game sells good. If a game is good, then word to mouth might help, but having adverticing as well will probably increase the chances for a game to sell even more
But i do agree that low sales of a game shouldnt always be blamed on low or no adverticing, but in some cases maybe low or no adverticing might be one of the reasons why a game ended up not selling too good because people werent aware of the game and word to mouth alone didnt reach that many people?
EDIT: I added some text.
