MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

[YanksFan4Life]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

I don't understand how 2K can afford to give away a million dollars.... i mean that money given away has to affect them somehow as a company...

[rudyjuly2]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

I'm not a baseball junkie but I like getting one game to play until NCAA Football comes out. Football is #1 for me no doubt. I'm starting to get the itch for baseball though and just popped MLB 2K10 in for the first time since last July lol. The commentary and atmosphere are really good. But some things like the overly accurate pitching, lack of cpu power, lack of sliders, lack of errors and injuries just keep the game from satisfying you over the long haul. There is a real lack of overall polish to this game but it would only take a few changes to really improve the game. That's why I'm interested in hearing about the changes and new features only to be let down when they announce news is coming and it's crap.

[Saberq]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

I don't understand how 2K can afford to give away a million dollars.... i mean that money given away has to affect them somehow as a company...

Not really Take 2 earned over 40 million last year overall so that is not a big problem........But I would like to know why is that a big story...It's like please buy my game we are giving away 1 million dollars......How about you give us a million information about a game...How's that?

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

I don't understand how 2K can afford to give away a million dollars.... i mean that money given away has to affect them somehow as a company...

They can't afford NOT to give away million dollars. They get more than a million's worth of coverage from all kinds of outlets, including the morning shows that will do a human interest story on the kid that won the money last year. Those are parents that will buy the game for their kids, and never have to bring up the quality of the game in the entire piece.

All kinds of news shows on TV, web sites, and forums will end up adding additional discussion of the game. They hope that folks will also mention how good the game was last year, too.

It's just another way to buy ad time.

That said, I was pretty disappointed that this was the first info we got. But really, it's not a big deal. What the devs tell me will have nothing to do with how good the game is. It's just another part of the spin.

It's not good or bad. It just is. It's kind of sad how entitled many of us act here.

[WazzuRC]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

Wow. This game is set to release in a month and a half and we virtually have zero info on it, except who's on the cover.

[myghty]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

Wow. This game is set to release in a month and a half and we virtually have zero info on it, except who's on the cover.

And that they are giving away a million dollars...

Yup, pretty dissapointing so far but I did not expect any more than this. Its the same every year. Other companies advertise months & months in advance, you would think they would follow suit.

[jeffy777]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

The 1st Developer Insight last year was relatively fluffy as well, then the 2nd one got into the meat and potatoes of the game, and they were pretty good from then on. So I guess I'm not really surprised that it's kind of the same this year. 2K's marketing does drive me nuts because it could be so much better, but as Joe said, it is what it is......As long as the game is good, I can live with their lame marketing.

[SevenTwentyNine]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

So their first commercial was footage from last year and their first insight is looking back at last year?

[ryan36]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

The 1 mil comes from an insurance company, if it's anything like other promotions...not 2k. They pay 200,000 give away 1mil

[Crash Davis]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

Gross just Gross, I really try and stay optimistic with any baseball game, but this is very annoying. Its like its the first inning and 2K's starter just gave up a grand slam....
Not a good start.

[Spanky]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

Great insight there, guys.

I can't help but feel they are hiding something. Or trying to. Like they have a disaster on their hands and they keep delaying information.

And quit patting yourselves on the back for this $1 million nonsense. Except for the guy who won, nobody cares.

A 1 in 10,000,000 chance of winning of $1 million isn't going to make me want to buy some piece of junk game, if that's what this title turns out to be.

[jeffy777]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

I can't help but feel they are hiding something. Or trying to. Like they have a disaster on their hands and they keep delaying information.

I wouldn't read too much into it. They do this with NBA too. For some reason, they just like to save all the real info for the last few weeks. As we've discussed several times before in other threads, it's a pretty lame marketing strategy, but it's just 2K's way.

Here's how Ronnie put it on twitter:

Ronnie2K @TrentSouth Late stream of info on all our titles, just the way we roll. We don't want to give away everything so far ahead of launch

Yeah it sucks, but it's just how their marketing does it, no matter what the game is like.

[Dazraz]

What are you doing 2K???

If you want to have any chance whatsoever of challenging Sony for sales then you need to match them for the amount of information & video highlights that are coming out on an almost daily basis. All we've had is a few, undoubtedly, touched up screenshots.

Is 2K's lack of response due their game not being ready to show or have they seen the videos for MLB the Show 11 & thought, s**t, we better do the $million thing again to garner some sales because our game is not that good again.

I hope I'm wrong because I really liked the way MLB 2K appeared to be heading. The MLB Today feature made The Shows commentary feel old while the pitcher/batter interface was also impressive.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

The 1 mil comes from an insurance company, if it's anything like other promotions...not 2k. They pay 200,000 give away 1mil

After someone got $1 million on the first day last year there is no insurance company who would cover that this year. There has to be a win for them to do so.

There was a local fishing contest where someone got $100,000 if they caught a specially tagged fish on the day of the contest. An insurance company covered it and someone won. The company was pissed and went and saw a stats professor of mine asking how likely that would have happened as they had obviously hoped it would have been harder. He simply said, "Given that someone did it I would expect the odds of winning to be pretty high." He kind of laughed that the insurance company didn't like that response.

Those insurance policies only makes sense if the number crunchers see an expected profit. I think there is a 99% chance someone wins $1,000,000 again which means no insurance company would touch it.

[DaveDQ]

Re: MLB 2K11 Developer Insight #1 - Marketing Looks Back at MLB 2K10

That said, I was pretty disappointed that this was the first info we got. But really, it's not a big deal. What the devs tell me will have nothing to do with how good the game is. It's just another part of the spin.

It's not good or bad. It just is. It's kind of sad how entitled many of us act here.

That's it in a nutshell for me. I know we are in times when information is so easily obtained, so the style in which 2K puts out info is odd to some, but there is a very unhealthy gaming culture these days that expects a great amount.

Gone are the days of me driving to the mall on release day and watching two TVs suspended from the ceiling in Babbages showing the most recent release. I can remember trying to persuade them to put different titles up there.