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Discussion Now with release imminent and reviews out, were the concerns the past months about TOTK's marketing justified?

Were the concerns justified?

  • Yes

    Votes: 44 25.6%

  • No

    Votes: 128 74.4%
  • Total voters
    172
Lugia667

Lugia667

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Since we are so close to release I thought I would ask this question. Over the past several months we have seen several concerns that the hype wasn't there or that Nintendo wasn't marketing this game in the right way. Now that it's almost out I feel like asking if these concerns were valid or just overblown anxiety?
 
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I never understood the complaints, we dont need to be spoonfed with a games features months ahead of it's launch.

I think it was well executed
 
There were never really concerns for most people. The vast majority of people knew this game would review and sell well with absolutely no marketing. There were probably a few outliers that legitimately thought Nintendo was messing up but I imagine that number was very small. Even among those that were talking about it, I think it largely came from a place of anticipation and a desire to see more from a game they were so excited about and had received very little information on, rather that a legitimate worry that something was wrong with the game or that it would fail to sell.
 
It was never about how "successful" the marketing campaign was for me. Of course it would work. They could've announced the game a month in advance of release and it would've done well.

Doesn't change that I absolutely hated how they went about marketing the game, and I hope it's not something they repeat in the future. The content they showed did not justify the 2 year wait time before showing anything significant, as well as the 1.75 years of essentially rehashing the same trailer and treating that as the big announcement of each direct.
 
Yes. I don't think that they did quite enough to hook in the casual fan or to satisfy the skeptical Zelda fans that did not care for Breath of the Wild. They definitely could've marketed the game more and I'm not really seeing any reason for such a high level of secrecy.

I think there's potentially a massive market in that creative-game (Minecraft, Roblox, etc.) type of audience that they haven't marketed to enough yet.
 
It was never going to matter once the game came out but I personally was not hyped at all until the final trailer. My biggest problem with the marketing was how many times they closed a direct with a TOTK trailer (E3 2019, E3 2021, 2022 and 2023) and was not excited once with what they showed each time, felt like the same content. Part of this I think has to do with how much the game got delayed and stretched out over the past few years though.

But now that it's almost here I'm super hyped, this past week I've been reminiscing on playing BOTW back in 2017 and am very excited for tomorrow. Nothing is like a Zelda release.
 
The game will clearly have great word of mouth and is going to sell a ton. So in a general sense TOTK's marketing is fine.

That being said, I find it a bit crazy Nintendo completely hid the fact that there's a whole underground abyss that's the exact same size as the original map. That aspect alone would alleviate 90% of the concerns surrounding the game's content. If I were Nintendo I would be pushing that hard, just as much as the sky islands.
 
The marketing was absolutely fine, they wanted to keep as much under wrap until as late as possible. Word of mouth alone would sell the game and Nintendo knows this.
 
Needs to be filled out by everyone who didn't have faith or called the game $70 dlc
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Some people certainly went overboard in their pessimism, and so from that point of view I voted "no". But at the end of the day, this is a product and it is Nintendo's job to convince consumers that it's worth buying to them. I think at times, some people (including myself to be honest) went a little overboard in the "it's the sequel to BOTW, you're silly to be worried" sentiment
 
0
fuck no the concerns weren't justified. every metric shown otherwise. people complaining on enthusiast message boards they aren't being shown enough isn't anything more than statistical noise
 
I understand that this is an enthusiast forum but I feel like we put entirely too much focus on marketing and "being hyped" which made following this discourse rather annoying at times. And as much as I teased #TeamConcern about it, there's really no point in trying to rehash this with the framing of who was right to believe what they believed. I hope that going forward we can all be a little more chill about these things.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
I understand that this is an enthusiast forum but I feel like we put entirely too much focus on marketing and "being hyped" which made following this discourse rather annoying at times. And as much as I teased #TeamConcern about it, there's really no point in trying to rehash this with the framing of who was right to believe what they believed. I hope that going forward we can all be a little more chill about these things.
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Someone posted a video the other day about how the peak spike of dopamine is during the hype cycle, not when the game actually releases and is good/bad. It's actually very understandable why people are most crazy during this period.
 
Tangerine_Cookie said:
They never were, and i find it weird people were complaining about the marketing.

Like, why are you worried about that, from a client's perspective
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off-topic but i love your old-school style signature lol. it has me super nostalgic for when i frequented forums back in the day.

But yes I found the concerns kind of silly. Just knowing who was working on it was enough for me.
 
BassForever said:
Someone posted a video the other day about how the peak spike of dopamine is during the hype cycle, not when the game actually releases and is good/bad. It's actually very understandable why people are most crazy during this period.
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Oh yeah, for sure. It also explains why people get a little unhinged and anxious when it comes to Directs or E3. I just wish it weren't like that lol.

I think I know which video you mean. I meant to watch it but forgot. If you still have it I'd appreciate a link but no biggie if you don't.
 
0
I think Nintendo's low-key marketing made sense because it gave their other games a chance to succeed without having to be compared to a very great looking game that wasn't out yet.

As far as what gamers were thinking... I'm not even gonna try to untangle that warm can of noodles.
 
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Tamantayoshi said:
I still think the marketing was bad, but in the end it doesn't matter now.
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This is where I'm at and it's really not something I have interest in debating at this point. At the end of the day, there are still some people who haven't been sold on the game yet and it's Nintendo's job to try and convince them to buy their product, not mine.
 
In a way, I think they were. I mean, Breath of the Wild is my favorite game of all time, and I wasn't all that hyped about Tears of the Kingdom during much of the run leading up to it. Was I still going to buy it day one? Absolutely. But the game was never at the top of my "most hyped" games list.

On the other hand, I think it's hard to say they were justified, because it seems that, in the end, Nintendo knew very well what they were doing when they turned it all around with the trailers posted during the last month. Trailers I haven't even watched.

So I guess is what I am saying is that I don't know. But I understand both sides.
 
There barely were any concerns, this is way too overblown. Many people thought the marketing was bad, me included, and I still stand by it. It wasn't until the final trailer where I thought we finally got a proper showing.

Heck, I've read in some places that Nintendo is now showing too much. It's like they put all the marketing in the last few weeks instead of spreading it out. And of course, I personally think they announced the game far too early. I guess it's Zelda tradition, but still...
 
The problem with all these "I still think it wasn't great" people is y'all were represented by "it looks like $70 dlc/not enough new" posters. It was clear Nintendo was extremely confident with the game and keeping a lot closer to their chest, which leaks and reviews have confirmed. It just further proves the internet discourse that people actually want to be spoiled and will throw a fit when marketing either doesn't spoil everything (like TotK) or omits a very important element of the game (like MGS2 or TLoU2). Nobody wants to be surprised when they play a game, they want to be surprised during the hype/marketing cycle for the game.
 
They revealed it too early. They showed underwhelming trailers twice. I've been pretty consistent in saying it would have been better to show nothing.
 
0
This might be results-oriented thinking since the final product is so special, but I think this kind of marketing cycle might actually be my preference for future games if I had to pick?

Instead of bombarding us with a bunch of content spread out across six months or even years in advance, we really learned almost everything in the last two months. I personally feel like it’s easier to obtain momentum/maintain patience for the game when it comes onto your radar or takes up more of your headspace with less notice. “Wait this game looks incredible, it’s only a month away?! :love:”

Metroid Prime 4 is my most anticipated game, but I am really glad we havent known anything during this time. Years of knowing exciting details without an actual impending release would be torturous! Also makes it harder to introduce other people who aren’t enthusiasts and give hem a reason to get hype when you’re telling them to mark their calendars several seasons ahead.

Games like Smash Bros. where each character reveal is a very specific standalone hype announcement I definitely prefer the stretched out marketing period though!
 
BassForever said:
The problem with all these "I still think it wasn't great" people is y'all were represented by "it looks like $70 dlc/not enough new" posters. It was clear Nintendo was extremely confident with the game and keeping a lot closer to their chest, which leaks and reviews have confirmed. It just further proves the internet discourse that people actually want to be spoiled and will throw a fit when marketing either doesn't spoil everything (like TotK) or omits a very important element of the game (like MGS2 or TLoU2). Nobody wants to be surprised when they play a game, they want to be surprised during the hype/marketing cycle for the game.
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Or, for some of us who didnt love breath of the wild as much as everyone else, we just needed to see more to be interested. Nintendo’s job is to get people interested in their products. If they arent doing that well for a segmeant of the audience, then I think thats on them. I really dont think its fair of you to group everyone who wanted to see more as “people who want to be spoiled, and will throw a fit when marketing doesnt spoil everything”. This is a full priced, 70 dollar product, and many of us need to know more about what were getting into before forking over that kind of cash. Im glad that the marketing was effective to you, but it wasnt for quite a few people as well. Both feelings are valid
 
the marketing was the way it is BECAUSE it's the sequel to BOTW not in spite of. Once you understand that, the marketing makes plenty of sense.

Nintendo was confident in the product but also in how popular the first game was which means they can and will show as little as they want since discovery is a massive part of the now duology.
 
0
In the sense of all the trailers were boring and made the game look a bit boring, yeah. Won't matter in terms of sales but in terms of pre-release enjoyment it does.
 
0
People who are amittedly buying something while complaining that the marketing isn't selling them on that same thing are weird.
 
Even as a dude who was waiting for that big "Ah hah!" moment to really motivate me, I did think the concern was certainly overblown.

Like, if it were me, the Ultra Hand/Fusion stuff could've been what they showcased back in February, and that would've satisfied me for months. Even if the artbook thing didn't happen haha.
 
0
It was masterful. About the same or better than BotW's as far as I'm concerned.
 
0
I think it was good, it got me very excited about the game so it’s hard to say they did anything wrong.
Tbh I think it was awesome we only saw major mechanics like ultrahand like a month before launch usually for a big game like this you know about that stuff like a year before
 
0
I mean

They certainly could've made people more excited about the game a good deal earlier. They didn't need to be quite as cagey about certain aspects as they were, and even still are (outside of letting reviewers talk about them). Details I won't share because people will call them spoilers, but no one would've cried foul if there were better glimpses of them in official trailers.

But at the end of the day, we got to the point where everyone's going bananas right as the game is launching, so... they did their job in the end? Whether you answer yes or no depends on your interpretation of the question. We're technically still in the marketing phase, after all.
 
The marketing makes perfect sense once you understand two things:
  • Nintendo are a video game publisher not a crack dealer. The point of marketing is not to keep terminally online fans high on dopamine. If you weren't interested in the game a year out, they probably didn't care since they weren't selling the game then.
  • BOTW is a great game. So much of the angst is about how Nintendo needed to effectively apologise for fucking up BOTW so badly and reassure everyone they learned from their mistakes. Except they didn't fuck up BOTW.
Leaving the bulk of the effort to the last several months is consistent behaviour in recent years. To use a plumbing analogy, the toilet doesn't flush by slowly trickling the contents of the cistern into the pan over hours. It dumps the water in the a few seconds.

I'm glad they held back for so long. The hype of the meat arrows works much better going into the game because we only learned about it recently. If we'd learned about it years ago, that knowledge would have gotten stale with the long wait.

Ultimately, it comes down to the long wait. Nintendo were damned if they do and damned if they do as evidenced by the fact that people are simultaneously complaining that they revealed stuff too early with the 2019 announcement and also didn't reveal enough.
 
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it's bizarre to me that they barely teased some of the more exciting features. i don't care about the internet reaction really, but i would agree that they were unnecessarily tight-lipped about a lot of it

i didn't need it all laid out, but it wouldn't have hurt to give more of a glimpse on some of the major set pieces
 
The trailers were lame (except the last one) so yes it was justified regardless of how good the final product is.
 
TotK may become my favorite game ever, and that doesn’t change my perception of the trailers. 3 out of 5 were underwhelming to me, with only the first and last ones being exciting.

It is obvious that Nintendo didn’t have any problem with sharing content of the game considering the amount of that they are showing us in the latest month, and it was more their strategy to wait until the end to show it properly.

A strategy that makes sense, and one that I personally don’t like it.
 
No it was not "justified". First of all being that upset about the marketing cycle of a product should never be a thing if you ask me.
More importantly I don't quite see how people are not catching on to how Nintendo is with these things: they very frequently, I would say more often than not, present their games in a way that is not all too appealing. I think this is in order to keep games fresh and exciting and surprising.

I also think they got burnt in the past and want to manage players expectations better (hahaha, I know). Either way I hope the "glorified DLC" people can take away from all this to keep the hyperbole a bit in check.
 
It was never really justified on a larger scale anyway for how people spoke of it. You don’t get the engagement nor pre-order numbers to the levels it reached with terrible marketing. On a personal level I can see reasons why one might not like the marketing direction. Past that though was reaching “there are dozens of us” meme.
 
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I thought it was too redundant. Should have just led with trailer 3 and been done with it. The worst thing for me is they were so coy with stuff and then just outright started releasing things they seemingly wanted close to the best in the last week. Maybe that’s because they knew reviewers would do it, just sort of a weird cycle. In the end though, none of it mattered
 
It wasn’t really about liking the marketing or not for me, I just wasn’t sold on a second BotW style Zelda by concept alone. So I wasn’t interested until like, now. Which honestly kind of ruled? Didn’t feel like a long wait at all for the game
 
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