Xbox's EMEAA Marketing Director: PlayStation Has Marketing Funds We Don't Have - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 November 2024 / 5,499 Views
Xbox's EMEA marketing lead Michael Flatt in an interview with Marketing Week revealed his team has a fairly small budget and aren't able to spend as much as PlayStation does in the EMEA market.
"From a funding point of view, we need to work really hard against our competition," said Flatt.
"Regrettably they [PlayStation] outspend us," he added. "They’re blessed with marketing funds that we’re just not able to enjoy. But that’s totally fine. We adopt what I would call a more fiscally responsible approach to media investments."
Flatt says his team is "not blessed with huge media budgets" and they "have to be quite scrappy and quite tenacious to fight for funds that would probably go somewhere else."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
Yeah, Xbox marketing has been crap for a long time now. I miss the OG Xbox and 360 days. Loved that era of Xbox marketing.
How Microsoft execs have no problem agreeing to spend tens of billions of dollars into massive purchases yet refuse to cough up a little more to properly market said purchases, I'll never know.
Divisons budgets have nothing to do with acquisitions. You can blame Xbox for using their money in the wrong way if you want but it would be very bad from Microsoft to just take risk by throwing more money that what the Xbox division is supposed to work with in the first place to reach their targets. This is it how business works
Yet, if Xbox people are meant to then handle the acquisition, they need to be given the appropriate funding to do so, this includes advertising. "Welcome to the Xbox Family." or whatever the slogan was.
I wouldn't say MS giving their Xbox marketing department a bit more cash is risk btw. You want a product to succeed (when you aren't already the market leader) you gotta invest in it and just buying studios isn't that.
Oh I agree with you. My response is to those who does not seem to understand that paying 79B for an acquisition has nothing to do with how much money the Xbox LOB can spend :)
I talked about the risk because at the end; it is not as easy as just saying ‘we are rich; who cares let’s burn money on marketing for Xbox’
Purchasing and marketing are not under the same budgets and departments.
Exactly what I was thinking !!!
Microsoft's marketing for Xbox is a joke. They will spend $70b almost to acquire ABK, but it seems like they won't even give Xbox several hundred million $ a year to market the system, Gamepass, and their first party games. At one point Xbox gave Halo 2 an $80m marketing budget and that was in 2004 dollars, I'd be willing to bet no single Xbox game has got $80m in marketing since Xbox One released in 2013, in spite of rampant inflation since 2004.
They are marketing Xbox, they just are not spending as much money as Sony in that department. Look at the marketing from their previous Games Showcase. They market in different ways.
Said it before and I’ll say it again…
Xbox console will be discontinued or sold off to another company.
Xbox gamepass will be the primary focus. It will come to PlayStation but will be gutted to only cover MSFT games. It will be like EA play.
It is not like MS provides any competition, good riddance I say.
You’d say that? No kidding :)
Aren't you a PC gamer? Why would it matter to you if Xbox exist or not?
And you will still say it in 10 years when none of this will still happen… like it still did not happen and people are saying it since 10 years; every year we get that ‘Xbox is doomed blah blah blah’ and nothing happens and like every year people are coming with ‘new reason’ why this time it is for real. Just get over it lol
Will GamePass be available on Play Station, you bet Microsoft wants that, and this has nothing to do with killing off the Xbox console (or would lead to it).
Is it worth selling the XBox brand, though? MS already has enough studios and titles to be a big 3rd party and keep their gamepass, why would they give a recognizable brand to another company? Also, who would even buy XBox at this point? Apple? Google? They're not interested in things outside of mobile.
The XBox brand could end up being limited to the hardware side of MS Gaming (as in, controllers, gaming keyboards/joysticks, premade PCs...).
Amazon would be the best positioned and most likely buyer if it were to come up for sale methinks. They have tried to do their own gaming thing and haven't been able to pull it off which shows they have interest in the penetration into the industry they could get with the Xbox brand. Xbox on Firestick a half step in that direction too. Other "leftfield" potentials would be LG or Samsung (if they saw merit in going the Sony route). Google if they wanted a shot at deeper penetration outside of mobile. Apple always going to do their own thing and would stay away.
I think the idea of abandoning console hardware should be in the plan, but it still needs to consolidate Game Pass, make XCloud compete with GeForce Now and create a mobile store.
Now comes the negative point of Microsoft abandoning the high-performance console... who would be Sony's competitor? If Sony planned to adjust game prices annually, who would stop it?
I know that many would like to see the XBox console leave the market, but the biggest losers would be the Playstation audience. PC people have Steam, Epic, GOG, Windows Store, that is, a diversity of stores to buy from and no monopoly, which makes a healthy environment for users to be able to wait for a promotion or even buy cheaper than in the store. consoles, in addition, there are services such as Game Pass, EA Play, GeForce Now...
For Microsoft it makes a lot of sense to become a big studio and launch for Playstation, Nintendo, mobile, PC and cloud gaming, but I think this path is dangerous without the XBox as a console. It's a dream for Microsoft to see Sony playing the villain and selling its games at US$ 80, 90 or 100, because XBox and other studios only care about the 70%, that is, the higher the sales price, the more revenue .
What would be the FTC's argument if the XBox became just a publisher? There are conglomerates bigger than XBox like Tencent and Embracer Group, so there would be more possibilities to buy more studios.
As long as they own a console I can't see them being allowed to buy another big company. As a games publisher, I don't think there would be any objection to them buying any companies but the tricky part will be what they do with gamepass.
If they push the games to gamepass and make that the only way to play them that will be tricky. Imagine them buying take2/ea (ok that's fairyland) then going to Sony and saying COD/FIFA/gta6 will only come to Sony consoles on gamepass.....and we will charge players $30 per month and give you (Sony) 5% not 30% because we can. That will be interesting thing to work out. More likely is Microsoft takes all games off all consoles/pc's too eventually and simply has an app/dongle and streams them all....thats probably what they are aiming at.
When Microsoft gives up and Sony has a monopoly on the high-performance console, then at this point Playstation users will be in danger. The FTC needs to be careful not to take away a console manufacturer, as that doesn't help gamers. Competition will always be good, in fact, it is the key to innovation and even to containing a sudden increase in the price of games.
I think it makes more sense for the FTC to pressure XBox and Playstation to open their ecosystems to allow other stores such as Steam, Epic, GOG to enter... the variety of stores will bring security to users whether in building a library of games, in price or in the option to choose which hardware you will play on. This is a way to combat monopoly. Another thing that needs to be regulated are third party gaming contracts.
I don't bother with Game Pass, as it's just another way to play. Microsoft does not force you to subscribe to play, in fact, you can buy the game, just like on the Playstation or Switch.
Cloud gaming, in my opinion, is very good! I hope that the time will come when there will be parity in cloud computing/gaming performance with domestic hardware. It's great to have options to play, this definitely can't be bad for the user, but all of this needs to be regulated, there need to be laws. In the near future I can't see the console surviving, just like records, VHS, cameras, mp3 players... all of this has disappeared.
What I think will disappear in the near future is physical media, but the subscribe-to-play or buy-to-play model will still remain. Microsoft will not and cannot take away Sony's games, as it does not own all the studios on the market and nor could it, as regulatory bodies are observing, there are laws to contain the monopoly.
In my view, Microsoft cannot buy EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, Sega, Konami, Cd Projekt... they are conglomerates! It can buy companies focused on mobile games (it makes perfect sense from the point of view of generating revenue), it can buy small studios worth millions, it can buy failing studios, and it can also set up new studios, offer better working conditions and try attracting talent from competitors, after all, it has the money to do so and the IP itself is not more important than the talents that created it.
Maybe physical will cease to exist, maybe it wont.
But your comparison doesnt make much sense, does it?
After all, records, VHS, Cameras and mp3-Players didnt just go away, they got replaced by something else that serves the same purpose.
Same with physical media. BlueRays may be phazed out at some point, but a different kind of physical media will fill the gap or simply force the replacement through superiority.
Imagine a data cube that holds terabytes of data and is pluged into your system, yet fits into the palm of your hand :D
There are cars with carburetors, but you won't find a car currently manufactured that has this component, as it was replaced by electronic injection. There are electronic devices that have valves, but nowadays you don't see an electronic device with this component, which has been replaced by transistors. I don't know when the console or physical media will die, but I know that in 20 years we may have technologies in the telecommunications area that can transmit games at 4K and 120 FPS, so if this option existed, many people would choose to just subscribe to a service and play Whether PC, television, mobile... of course there would be those people who would continue to prefer native hardware, but how long would the cost of manufacturing, the cost of logistics and other expenses make sense for the company? If only 5% of people bought a console, would it make sense to continue manufacturing? From an environmental point of view, wouldn't it be better to let the company update its servers, discard old or damaged components?
It's just a hypothesis, but it could happen! Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world, not only due to "business trickery", but due to its highly qualified team, as well as Apple, NVidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook... These are companies that generally innovate a lot, and It may or may not work, but when it does, it makes them a lot of money.
You notice playstation ads and banners lots of places... and never see xbox ones here.... so... yeah. He's saying "water is wet". The question is.... why dont they try at all? Why not spend some more on localasation efforts.. and marketing ?
You’re kidding right?
Ok, maybe MS HQ assigns them a meagre budget but that still sounds like penny pinching from one of the world’s richest companies.
In retrospect the biggest argument against MS buying ABK is that the underperformance of Xbox as a brand is going to drag ABK down with them into failure. Only a failing brand would end up with statements like "But but we don't have money for marketing"
Fuck off u have no fucken money?
Microsoft swimming in gaddamn money Sony outspends in marketing?
Get fucked that's a disgusting excuse
Microsoft's marketing leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to denying rumors.
Use social media more! It is not possible for a company channel on Facebook, Youtube, X, Linkedin and others to cost so much! Put at least one subtitle in the language of each country and have a strong tool to promote your products. Marketing is not my area of training, but does it require a large investment? Wouldn't it be better to have direct contact with your audience, be able to filter comments, see requirements and expectations.
It would be nice to at least have channels in key countries and a decentralized marketing team creating content, interacting and seeing public feedback. I don't know if it is unethical to use social networks from competing companies, but I believe not, as Microsoft only has a social network aimed at the professional area and not for entertainment.
There are YouTubers who have a team of 2 to 5 people to create content, and many of these people are not even experts... many start as amateurs.
Seems like they do a lot of marketing tbh. Wouldn't exactly call it their biggest issue.
What is MS going to do marketing for ? That they have the worst games out of all 3 consoles ?
But they should be tying to market Game Pass a lot more which is their only strength.
If Xbox don't do tons more marketing with their games incoming, then it will go from ludicrous to a farce.
All of MS marketing money will be spend on CoD ? At the expense of all other games ?
They know the drill... spend $$ to make $$. They should be marketing the F out of all the IP they added to their repertoire. Instead, they banked on the announcement of them buying Bethesda and ABK as a means to drive interest... boy were they wrong.
ABK has made Xbox profit as much as its rivals. Thats what matters. They also literally marketed their games with their recent Showcase.
Essay Pro