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Discussion Nintendo was worried TOTK marketing was not resonating with fans, which prompted them to fast track a gameplay demonstration to clarify its mechanics

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Another hiccup came when the second trailer dropped in February, and the team noticed a lack of enthusiasm. “People had not gotten their heads around the gameplay elements or where the fun might be,” Aonuma said. Nintendo decided to feature Aonuma explaining the game’s concepts in a 13-minute demonstration, which did the trick.
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Washington Post

Personally I still think the final trailer did more to generate hype for the game than the gameplay video did, but on the whole after April I don't think a lack of excitement for TOTK was an issue either way lol.

And hey, ultimately, regardless of how we felt about the marketing at the time, in the end, the results speak for themselves. 10 million in three days is pure insanity.
 
Well, yeah haha, the marketing was pretty non existent for a while there. But they really kicked things up in the last month or so : ), theres definitely a balance to be struck between holding back surprises, but also showing enough to get people excited
 
The whole interview is pretty interesting and worth reading. But for this thread, that second trailer was definitely when my enthusiasm was at its lowest ahead of launch. Interesting to think that the gameplay demonstration we did get wasn’t fully planned out by then, that helped a lot as we really didn’t know the core differentiator until then. Certainly wasn’t the sky islands despite that being a big focus in marketing. Biggest marketing misstep personally was not addressing how “dungeon gameplay” would exist in any form until two days before launch.
 
That gameplay demo was what got me to preorder the game.

TotK had a really long cycle from reveal to release and until April it felt like the marketing strategy was just to tease and not say what the game is. I'm not gonna be going frame by frame through a trailer and analyzing every pixel so I appreciated it when they were just upfront about the new gameplay.
 
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Wait so were they expecting us to have our heads wrapped around how the game worked just from the few vague trailers before the demo lol?

Watching those E3 demos for BotW was how a lot of us got our heads wrapped around that game.
 
JRPGHurtsWallet said:
You don’t need to market a game like Zelda to sell copies, or any Nintendo first party for that matter. The seal of quality speaks for itself.
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Regarding the bolded: May be true to the biggest IPs, but I'm pretty sure some first party series needs marketing. Quality is not indication of success lol

Aurc said:
I can't believe people weren't enthusiastic about Nintendo showing absolutely nothing of the game.
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Yeah like... I don't know what Nintendo was thinking there.
 
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Phantom Thief said:
#TEAMCONCERN VINDICATED BY NINTENDO THEMSELVES, WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
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The call is coming from inside the house

Chaos Theory said:
Not surprised to read this. Quite a lot of incompetent people claiming there wasn't something off with the marketing, so it's great to see an admission right from Nintendo themselves.
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Well I'm glad we have been proven to be incompetent Nintendo fans /s

But tbh all this really means is that Nintendo was also wrong about their own advertising - at the end of the day the results are what matter and we've seen the results
 
That’s nice to see. Hopefully there’s more clarity with the marketing in the future.

Feels like Nintendo’s been rolling with cryptic trailers for their biggest in house titles as of late (Splatoon 3 also had this issue for a while), hopefully this changes things. You can provide clarity about the game without directly spoiling things.
 
Aurc said:
I can't believe people weren't enthusiastic about Nintendo showing absolutely nothing of the game.
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Someone high up the chain definitely decided to keep as much of the game as close to the chest as possible. Even as the marketing ramped up towards the end, Nintendo was dead silent on critical gameplay components like the Depths. Why they made this decision I can't say, perhaps they were confident that being the sequel to BOTW spoke for itself. I think any other company though would have done a whole blowout on the component I mentioned instead of hiding it until release.

I do think there is a tricky balance to hit between showing too much and not showing enough, and TOTK is full of great surprises, so I guess this was better than the alternative. I think also the delay might have thrown off their plans as well.
 
Thunder84 said:
That’s nice to see. Hopefully there’s more clarity with the marketing in the future.

Feels like Nintendo’s been rolling with cryptic trailers for their biggest in house titles as of late (Splatoon 3 also had this issue for a while), hopefully this changes things. You can provide clarity about the game without directly spoiling things.
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... yeah I'm not really sure how you look at the sales here and think "yeah maybe we marketed this poorly"

If anything this incentivizes more secretive marketing because they had a concern and it turned out to be nearly completely unwarranted
 
That second trailer was lowkey kinda bad. Turned me off the game until the demo and eventually great third trailer came around.
 
NabiscoFelt said:
... yeah I'm not really sure how you look at the sales here and think "yeah maybe we marketed this poorly"

If anything this incentivizes more secretive marketing because they had a concern and it turned out to be nearly completely unwarranted
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Nintendo clearly did though. They thought it wasn’t working, so they changed things up. The final 6-8 weeks is always more important for marketing anyway, and that certainly wasn’t secretive.

Regardless, I’m not speaking on what does or doesn’t work. Just what I hope they do in the future. I don’t care for the cryptic trailers at all, and I hope Nintendo does away with them.
 
They made just enough of a pivot at the right time to keep their secrecy while still getting to show people the main gameplay innovations. For what was effectively a last minute, it worked out pretty well.

In truth, it's a shame that what is effectively a single paragraph about marketing is the main takeaway from an interesting interview/expose into Aonuma. But I get it, especially when the marketing wasn't exactly popular until they made the pivot.
 
NabiscoFelt said:
... yeah I'm not really sure how you look at the sales here and think "yeah maybe we marketed this poorly"

If anything this incentivizes more secretive marketing because they had a concern and it turned out to be nearly completely unwarranted
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They changed their strategy towards the end with a long gameplay demonstration followed by an immediate trailer. The perception of the game immediately changed after those last two pieces of marketing.
 
Yeah the approach of "let's show next to nothing about the game, what sets it apart from BOTW, and why you should be excited" was garbage and did the game itself a disservice, they were right to change course.

TOTK is an amazing game but up until just a few weeks out they did an incredibly bad job of showcasing that, or even what it was about.

If you're asking me to plonk down $80 AUD of my hard earned cash, it's not unreasonable of me to need more than just "it's the next Zelda."
 
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The second trailer was weak then and downright bad in retrospect, that's why. The first segment, frankly, screams more of the same but incrementally upgraded, and then the second one has a compilation of scenes that change very quickly and don't make clear any of the gameplay options. Fusion was featured but there's no sensible way anybody could've guessed you could "fuse" objects with your weaponry to obtain a variety of effects. Ultrahand is also displayed at the end but the assembly feature isn't made clear either.

So it's no wonder why the "Tears is just a BotW Expansion" talk was still alive just a few months ago.
 
NabiscoFelt said:
... yeah I'm not really sure how you look at the sales here and think "yeah maybe we marketed this poorly"

If anything this incentivizes more secretive marketing because they had a concern and it turned out to be nearly completely unwarranted
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Come on, Aonuma himself just said they were taking the wrong approach and needed to change tact, of course your second paragraph isn't true.
 
In a way, this sort of "we'll show you our hand when its ready" marketing kind of backfired on Nintendo. I think the Febuary Direct should've had a dedicated segment for TotK to show off its new game-play.
 
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Personally, the final trailer is what really rocketed my hype through the roof. That and the reveal trailer were the only ones that got me excited to play.

I didn’t watch the extended gameplay demonstration. I’m happy for them, or sorry that happened, and I’m glad it existed for the many people who needed it, but I’m not sitting through all that.
 
So their original plan was to show even less??? Holy shit lol

At least they acknowledged and agreed with what a bunch of fans were saying about the marketing
 
Yeah, Nintendo definitely initially went a bit overboard on being secretive about the game. There's not spoiling things, and then just not talking about the core gameplay mechanics that differentiate the game from its predecessor.
 
bellydrum said:
Yeah a 10 million in three days lesson
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People need to stop acting like "because it sold a lot" is justification for anything.

Pokémon ScarVio is probably the most broken big game Nintendo has ever put their name on, but it still sold basically the same as TOTK. That doesn't mean everything can release as a broken mess like that, it's just that the brand is strong enough that you can still get adequate results like that. Nobody doubts that ScarVio could be doing even better if it worked as flawlessly as TOTK does, do they? No matter how badly they flubbed advertising, TOTK was always going to have a very high floor for sales no matter what based purely on being the sequel to breath of the wild.

LukasManak22 said:
The first trailer in 2019 was all that matter. Sequel to BOTW. Done.
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Nintendo "Says a thing"
"Wow, they mean the exact opposite of what they just said!"

Serious question: How much more explicit do you need it to be to believe it than the most prominent person on the games team coming out and saying "Yeah we realised that we weren't showing enough" isn't enough to convince you of what they thought.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Nintendo "Says a thing"
"Wow, they mean the exact opposite of what they just said!"

Serious question: How much more explicit do you need it to be to believe it than the most prominent person on the games team coming out and saying "Yeah we realised that we weren't showing enough" isn't enough to convince you of what they thought.
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But he is just saying that the trailer #2 did not really show where the fun might be with new abilitties, he is not saying that they had to do a gameplay video because of that. It's very hard to imagine that they would not have the gameplay video planned already before that, these things are prepared months in advance. Tears marketing campain was planned months before release.
 
LukasManak22 said:
But he is just saying that the trailer #2 did not really show where the fun might be with new abilitties, he is not saying that they had to do a gameplay video because of that. It's very hard to imagine that they would not have the gameplay video planned already before that, these things are prepared months in advance.
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They just said exactly that verbatim. I don't understand how you're struggling to comprehend this simple chain of events. For a start, there was over a month and a half 2 between trailer 2 and the gameplay demo, and we know it was recorded late because it starts with Aonuma telling us development was finished.

"The reaction to our trailers isn't going down as well as we hoped because people aren't understanding what's new or where the fun is"
-> Nintendo as a company will ask "What can we do about it?"
->And as we saw, their answer was "We'll create an additional gameplay short video demonstrating the new features."
 
Chaos Theory said:
Not surprised to read this. Quite a lot of incompetent people claiming there wasn't something off with the marketing, so it's great to see an admission right from Nintendo themselves.
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People aren't incompetent just because they had a different take on the strength of the game's marketing. I think that's a step too far.
 
JorgenRaft said:
Wait so were they expecting us to have our heads wrapped around how the game worked just from the few vague trailers before the demo lol?

Watching those E3 demos for BotW was how a lot of us got our heads wrapped around that game.
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They were expecting us to trust them and to not want to get spoiled on even some of the central gameplay systems so that it would all feel fresh and exciting to us on our first playthrough.

I personally am a huge sucker for minimalist marketing. I hope they will keep that approach going forward.
 
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LukasManak22 said:
It's very hard to imagine that they would not have the gameplay video planned already before that, these things are prepared months in advance. Tears marketing campain was planned months before release.
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Linkstrikesback already responded to the rest, but just to add on for this part specifically - it's not hard to imagine at all lol. It's literally a ten minute casual gameplay video, this kind of thing does not require months of preparation. If it did then Nintendo would be the least efficient company on earth. I'm sure they had a plan in advance, but it wasn't working and they pivoted. It's not that hard.
 
Aurc said:
I can't believe people weren't enthusiastic about Nintendo showing absolutely nothing of the game.
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Just need the name and seal of quality. I've emailed Nintendo Customer Support to tell Bowser to remove the screenshots from the eShop. No more logos. Just the title and blank images. Enough. Frankly I'm shocked Nintendo stooped low (like Microsoft and Sony) and released a trailer and showed gameplay. Were they not confident last minute?
 
I mean they say this but even after the second trailer metrics were still really good both in engagement & pre-orders. The gameplay demonstration definitely kicked it into overdrive though but even the final trailer would have done it I think without the demonstration.
 
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Yamanoi said:
Just need the name and seal of quality. I've emailed Nintendo Customer Support to tell Bowser to remove the screenshots from the eShop. No more logos. Just the title and blank images. Enough. Frankly I'm shocked Nintendo stooped low (like Microsoft and Sony) and released a trailer and showed gameplay. Were they not confident last minute?
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Wholeheartedly agree. I think they were onto something with this white text on black background. These should've been the only game screenshots players needed.

 
LukasManak22 said:
But he is just saying that the trailer #2 did not really show where the fun might be with new abilitties, he is not saying that they had to do a gameplay video because of that. It's very hard to imagine that they would not have the gameplay video planned already before that, these things are prepared months in advance. Tears marketing campain was planned months before release.
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steps up to podium

taps mic

"plans change"


clapping-applause.gif
 
I'd absolutely encourage people to read the full article, because it's a great read with tidbits about development of the game and Aonuma, instead of using a single paragraph to return to a months-long forum battle about Who Was Right On The Internet.
 
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