THIS WEEK IN GAMING

During a single magical week in June, eyeballs from gamers all over the world are drawn to Los Angeles, where the biggest publishers in the world show off and announce their new games. The allure for creative brands is obvious. Every consumer is watching, all media are covering and if you’re roadmap for the future stands out in the crowd, you’ve won! This year at the so-called Summer Game Fest was no different, with one clear, surprising winner: Xbox.

After years of struggling to keep up with competitors PlayStation and Nintendo, Microsoft finally swayed the public opinion in their favor.

Microsoft’s behemoth of a gaming brand winning is surprising, because times have been tough for the so-called ‘Green Brand’. In an industry admittedly struggling to deal with the continued success of ongoing games like Fortnite and Roblox, Xbox recently shut down beloved development studio’s Arkane and Tango Gameworks (the latter published fan-favorite game Hi-Fi Rush just last year). These closures followed on the heels of Microsoft’s record $75,4 billion acquisition of publisher Activision (Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Diablo) and thousands of job cuts at other studios in Xbox’ stable.

Catering to gamers

But, catering to gamers is as finicky as it is predictable. Kill their favorite franchise and they’ll ‘never play on your console again’ and you are, without a doubt ‘the worst thing to happen to gaming’. Drop some cool looking trailers the next day and they ‘can’t wait!’ because ‘the future is looking bright!’. And after years of struggling to keep up with competitors PlayStation and Nintendo, Microsoft finally swayed the public opinion in their favor. While both of those competitors have been defending their larger market shares with relative ease, perception has them in pretty quiet waters. PlayStations style of communication has been very reserved to the point of boring these last couple of years, while Nintendo is doing little more than just getting through the final stages of the Switch’ lifecycle, before a new Nintendo Switch releases in 2025.

Microsoft just needed to be good this year to ‘win’ in the eyes of the public. But they didn’t want to just win. They wanted to obliterate. So they went all out.

Xbox Showcase

During a 2+ hour showing called Xbox Showcase, Xbox could finally present gaming’s biggest moneymaker (Call of Duty) as a product of their own. The new Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 should arrive October 25th and will no doubt bring in billions in sales, microtransactions and marketing deals – as has been the case for many years now. It’s no surprise influencers and marketeers flock to Call of Duty, since the King of Commerce has been undefeated for over a decade now.

There are few things gamers love more than nostalgia.

But wait, there’s more!

Call of Duty was just the start of an impressive road map to the future. Great looking new games from in-house developer Bethesda like Indiana Jones: The Great Circle and Doom: The Dark Ages catered to mainstream audiences. An impressive first look at Perfect Dark got gamers that still remember when that franchise was relevant excited, while highly anticipated titles like Fable, State of Decay 3 and South of Midnight each got a fresh spot in the limelight. Ending on a high note, Microsoft revealed a new Gears of War-game in the making: Gears of War: E-Day, with a trailer hitting all the right (nostalgic) notes. There are few things gamers love more than nostalgia. And surely, you can’t talk about thousands of people getting made redundant in your company, even after spending a record amount of dollars on new acquisitions, when you announce a new Gears of War, right? The future is looking bright!

Connect with us at VCTRY.agency for a session on how we can level up your brand game.

And of course, check out our Website!