Marketing in the news

 I picked this article because I have always enjoyed gaming and FPS games. The debate between Activision's "Call Of Duty" and EA's "Battlefield" has been going on since the early 2000's. I'm a fan of both games series and have been enjoying the new Battlefield 6 since it's launch. This article caught my attention because its a large shift away from a long running tradition of PlayStation heavy COD marketing.

Screen Rant published an article titled "PlayStation Just Ended Its Call of Duty Era -- Here's What Comes Next". The article covers how PlayStation has recently changed up its marketing strategies. Call of Duty is one of the best selling game series of all time with over 500 million copies sold, and it was a major seller on the PlayStation. Unfortunately for Sony, Activision was recently purchased by Xbox their main competitor. Previously Sony spent massively advertising to get players to use PlayStation to play COD but now with little incentive to do so they have pivoted to a different series. Sony has now started to market Battlefield 6 to be played on their consoles and fans agree that this was a smart decision.

Sony's PlayStation brand has been a pioneer in the home console space since 1993 being the first to offer 3d graphics at home. PlayStation's value proposition is that through cutting edge technology and a diverse library of games they can be the ultimate console for gaming.

The marketing relevance in this article is that this marks a major shift in gaming's most popular consoles marketing budget. PlayStation users make up a majority of the Call of Duty sales but this change from Sony could lead swing in what people are playing. Now Sony has turned their attention to Battlefield 6 with new promotional material on billboards and buses. Battlefield has a lot of hype around it so Sony wants to cash in and get people playing on PlayStation. 

This marketing approach is nothing new. It was pretty standard for the entertainment industry with ads, commercials, and billboards. There wasn't anything that remarkable about their strategy. I think that they should of taking a heavier approach with the steady decline of Xbox. This would have been a great opportunity to showcase the value of the PS5 and why players should buy on. I think they should have hired a PR firm to make a commercial showing off the their technological advantages.

I learned form this article that companies should be able to quickly switch what products they advertise so that when consumer preferences change they can be in a position to get the most they can.

PlayStation.com