And the Viral Marketing responded,
“Well, Malstrom! You want the answers to the viral messaging?”
Tell me your secrets, you little demon!
“Very well. The secret is to take every market advantage of Nintendo and twist it into a negative. It is like this…”
I waited as Viral Marketing responded…
“Nintendo has an advantage of doing well with young demographics unlike its competitors. Therefore, turn that success into a failure by labeling Nintendo as ‘kiddy’.”
I see, I see. Go on.
“Nintendo has an amazing motion controller its competitors do not. Call this awesome innovation as ‘gimmick’ so we can turn that strength into a weakness.”
Hmm, I think I am sensing the pattern.
“We wish we had the First Party strength of Nintendo. Since we can’t, we will try to turn it into a weakness. We then proclaim that ‘Third Party games don’t sell on Nintendo.”
And that the only games that sell on Nintendo systems are made from Nintendo, right?
“Right! You are getting it! So when Nintendo’s new Core games are from everyone’s favorite franchises, we combat that by going…”
…that Nintendo doesn’t make new IPs. But the reality is that you only make new IPs because you don’t have any current ones that sell like Nintendo’s does. I see what you mean by projecting their strength as a weakness!
Thank you, little demon. I will take the post from here.
“My pleasure.”
Viral Marketers are not Internet Ninjas. They even have websites! Here is an interesting article written by a Viral Marketer for Viral Marketers. As he says, it is based entirely around creating emotion.
Microsoft applies viral marketing more towards F.U.D. however. You can see FUD come out of the Xbox executive’s mouth verbatim right here. You can even read Rob Fahey talking about Microsoft’s FUD over yonder.
The reason why I cite Microsoft for stealth FUD campaigns is that they have a history of doing it and also you don’t see the ‘angry emotion’ going on in the handheld market (where Microsoft is absent). DS and PSP owners are just fine with one another.
DS and Wii share a similiar strategy. Yet, no one is saying Nintendo is abandoning Core games on the DS. Only on Wii, where Microsoft is competing, is that echoed over and over again in every comment and story.
Remember when the Wii came out and people called it “N64 graphics”? Note how no one calls it “N64 graphics” anymore. I recall a Halo developer going around and making complaints about Twilight Princess with its “N64 graphics” hoping that someone would take the bait and spread the saying. But it didn’t work. I remember this because when I mentioned Nintendo’s ‘disruption’, he would put up a picture of a lightning bolt so the concept would not be discussed. Naturally, he left Bungie and works at Microsoft now. But that is one example I’m sure of that I have seen with my eyes.
Most gamers, including the hardcore, are not going to be in an emotional boil over something Nintendo did or didn’t do all the time. People just don’t have the emotional resevoir. That is, unless someone is fueling their fire intentionally and trying to stir things up. It is quite interesting how on the DS side, everyone is content, even PSP and DS people get along just fine. But on the console side, you’d think ‘Console War’ started yesterday with the emotions still going on. DS, which has the so-called evil casual games (even a version of that evil Carnival Games!), was not said to be the end of gaming as Wii is.
What is the major difference between the handheld and console markets to explain this emotional boil? Nintendo is in both. Sony is in both. Microsoft is the only outstanding difference. Nintendo and Sony’s handheld strategies are very similiar to their console strategies. Yet, their console versions are “evil” for bizarre reasons.