FFXIII Commercial

[Fuzz]

Most of us have probably seen clips of this before, but during the NBA All-Star Celebrity game (sponsored by FFXIII), ESPN aired the 1st U.S. commercial for the game. Quick 30 second slot backed with Leona Lewis doing the theme song, I'm sure it reached a lot of viewers.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ABsJgxZH-Q

[chrono]

Thanks i have never seen it. I do not have cable or the freaking converter so it is all blur for me.

[Dodie16]

I actually haven't seen any commercials for the game yet, because I reduced my tv watching quite drastically. Anyway, needless to say, this is the first one I've seen as well for the game.

It's alright. Getting pretty sick of that Leona Lewis song though. I swear, nearly every video update I see for this game, that song is blasting in the background. >>

[smurphy]

Wow the Square enix marketing department has made a piss poor attempt at reaching its demographic. I have no doubts it would have reached a wider audience but probably an audience who prefers proper "mainstream" games like COD.

[loaf]

I really dislike lyrics in most of their songs with lyrics.

Commercial was really short and meh.

[Andromeda]

Yeah I think it's really hard to sell a game in 30 seconds, a minute would do it better. The commercial was fairly uninteresting, but so were all of the Japanese commercials and they have 15 second spots, which way too little. All you can do with a 15 second spot is remind FF fans there's a FF game coming out. It's not going to get new people interested.

I think real trailer that they had did a better job and could easily be cut down to a minute and played as a longer commercial. They were sponsoring the thing, I think they could manage a longer TV spot. But the ad looks like a Japanese agency made it since it felt like all of the Japanese commercials I see for almost any video game. They run footage with the theme song running and in general doesn't really leave a strong impression for anyone that isn't already interested.

I can't wait for the game and that commercial couldn't get me excited. Yet I'll go back daily and watch the trailer because it actually does get me excited for the game each time. It might be like 3 minutes long or something, but it does what it needs to do, get you pumped and psyched up.

[Che]

I don't understand why they just market it to one system, even though it's coming out on PS3 as well. Is it because they believe the ESPN fanbase pretty much all have Xbox's over PS3s?

And if they aren't gonna do anything but remind the fans that a new game is coming out, why even put out the ads? If it's not going to attract anyone knew (and it won't, with the silly theme song -_-), it just seems like a giant waste of money. The fans know theres another one coming out.

[Furore]

I don't understand why they just market it to one system, even though it's coming out on PS3 as well. Is it because they believe the ESPN fanbase pretty much all have Xbox's over PS3s?

My guess is they realise they have an established Sony fanbse who'll definetely buy the game while they might need to sell the concept to more of the 360 owners. That or Microsoft exchanged some money, that seems to happen every so often.

Whatever the case that advert was one of the crappiest game ads I've ever seen.

[Ryu-Kentoshii Hirokima]

Thanks For The Find Fuzz!!! (=^_^=) I Will Have To Watch It When I Get Home.

Cannot Access Youtube At School...XD

[xTidus]

I don't think Leona Lewis should sing the main theme song for the game.. I mean what happened to the classic tune?

I already got my pre-order too! =D

[Ernest]

My guess is they realise they have an established Sony fanbse who'll definetely buy the game while they might need to sell the concept to more of the 360 owners. That or Microsoft exchanged some money, that seems to happen every so often.

Whatever the case that advert was one of the crappiest game ads I've ever seen.

I would say the later. Xbox's outnumber PS3's like 7-1 in NA, don't they?

However in Australia, the PS3 outnumbers the Xbox, and even though the ad features both game cases, it has 'XBOX' in large text at the end of the video. Lol. So yeah, Microsoft no doubt passed some money.

They will never beat the PS3 sales, Japan's PS3 will cream everyone, but they'll come close.

[Andromeda]

Actually PS3 and 360 sales in the US territories are less than 2 to 1, its is about 21.8 million to 12.8 million. At least so says VG Charts which is fairly accurate overall. The US and overseas market for FF is actually better in grand totals than Japan, DQ is actually the one that is almost only popular in Japan and nearly unknown anywhere else. So the sales here stand to mean a lot, but overall I don't really think the availability on the 360 is going to be mean a lot. What it means more than anything else is that the people that were planning on buying a PS3 to play the game will be playing it on the 360 instead. Being on the 360 itself is not going to be providing a great sales boosts that SE would never have seen if they only released on PS3.

RPG sales in general are pretty finite and don't tend to grow beyond their core group. FF has longer legs than other RPGs because of name brand and so they grab up a larger part of that finite group, but in general they don't push beyond those pre-existing barriers. And I don't think the commercial is helping them push out of the box that they're already stuck it. I suspect that anyone owning both consoles will be playing it on the PS3 and anyone limited to one will be playing it on their current console. Question is how many RPG players own only a 360 currently. FF sales will be a good measure of that I think.

[Furore]

However in Australia, the PS3 outnumbers the Xbox, and even though the ad features both game cases, it has 'XBOX' in large text at the end of the video. Lol. So yeah, Microsoft no doubt passed some money.

No it doesn't. In the first two places are the Nintendo DS and then Nintendo Wii, then comes the 360 and then trailing (not by much according to most sources) them is the PS3.

One thing that has always bothered me here is a distinct lack of people I know playing PS3s.

Oh and I've heard the difference between versions is solely that the PS3 will run with uncompressed high res video/audio while the 360's cinematics will use bink and be at a lower resolution.

[Andromeda]

I'll be curious to know if it runs into the same problem that Star Ocean 4 on the 360 did. Where the third disc didn't have all of the basic world content so you had to pop in the other side to back track to other parts of the game. It's never been a problem on the PSone games for FF, but *shrugs* I don't think there was a problem like that when I was playing Star Ocean 3 (two discs) and seems like a strange mistake to make for Tri-Ace now, but oh well.

We'll know soon enough. Square Enix had a big mix up earlier this week over 360 screenshots being released in a comparison against the PS3 and it was quickly figured out that they were just PS3 screens doctored up with 360 controls. Square Enix quickly made the statement that they were a mistake, but those sorts of things aren't actually positive news for them. ^^; The up side is that the average gamer doesn't follow gaming news so it will fly under the radar of the bulk of the buying population.

[Ernest]

I don't think the average person would really be discouraged from buying the game because of that news. It's very interesting indeed, but all it really says is that they're a dodgy company. A dodgy company that release good games.

The PS3 Version of FFXIII has been confirmed to have better sound quality by Square, but they deny that the graphics differ. Yet then they pull stunts like this, lol. Did they actually think they could fool people? No graphics ever look identical.

[Andromeda]

Well it is more to the concern everyone has that the 360 will be a visually inferior product. And releasing doctored PS3 screenshots that were supposed to be 360 doesn't really help their case. So it'll only end up increasing people's concern that the 360 version may not be the version that they should by and should drop the money on a PS3 to play it. It can be a rather important point for some gamers.

Plus it can psychologically work against people too that are already concerned. There could be nothing wrong with the game, but if they are already looking for problems to exist. They'll probably find something even if it is not real. The mind will do funny things.

Plus PS3 and 360 comparison are the big thing that everyone seems to be doing since there is so much heated competition between the two consoles with any multiplatform game. So it tends to be pretty important overall.

The fanboys get plenty of material.

[Furore]

Unofficial Final Fantasy Site - News: FF13 360 to use Bink for Cutscene Compression
There are several sites like this with the news of bink video. I'm currently led to believe that outside of cinematics the graphics will look more or less the same but in cinematics the PS3 version will be higher res.

And yeah, to confirm, there are also sources stating the PS3 version will have higher quality (7.1) audio.

Star Ocean on the 360 reminded me of Baldur's Gate 2 with a minimal install.
Bearable but quite annoying after a while.