Outrun 2 on PS2 ONLY

[antime]

Originally posted by Mr. Moustache@Nov 24, 2003 @ 08:08 AM

Hmmm.. so adding the X-box logo to an ad in a magazine, or the line, "also available on X-box" to a commercial is going to bump the marketing costs to astronomical proportions??

Well, you have to buy ads in magazines for both platforms, maybe even make different ads for the two versions and so on. But, let's wait until we get an official announcement before speculating further. (As a sidenote, Yu Suzuki is no longer head of AM2, and even if he were I'm pretty sure he couldn't afford to be so choosy after his Shenmue extravaganzas.)

Probably the only Live support that would be added would be to make the game Live-aware, something which AFAIK is required for all games nowadays (unless you're Electronic Arts), but it would still send the game into another round of testing. Not nearly as expensive as doing a port to a completely different platform, but I brought it up to point out that making an XBox version would involve more than a recompile.

Personally, I think Sega's multiplatform strategy is a success with good games coming out on all platforms.

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by antime+Nov 24, 2003 @ 10:43 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(antime @ Nov 24, 2003 @ 10:43 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-Mr. Moustache@Nov 24, 2003 @ 08:08 AM

Hmmm.. so adding the X-box logo to an ad in a magazine, or the line, "also available on X-box" to a commercial is going to bump the marketing costs to astronomical proportions??

Well, you have to buy ads in magazines for both platforms, maybe even make different ads for the two versions and so on. [/b][/quote]

Why again? I'm too feebleminded to grasp why advertising a game for multiple platforms requires seperate ads for each version.

 

[antime]

Dunno, but some companies do that. Maybe it's because of different demographics or something.

EDIT: As an example, Electronic Arts are currently showing different TV ads for the different versions of their latest sport games.

In Edge #128, the ad for Gamecube Soul Calibur 2 had a hand-drawn picture of some of the fighters with Link in a fighting pose with the caption "Fight As The Ultimate Legend." In the same issue, the ad for the PS2 and XBox versions showed a photo of two men in suits hitting each other with flowers and a string of sausages with the caption "Weapons featured not in game." (In this case, since Nintendo published the GC version themselves they probably did the advertising but it also shows how the target audiences for the platforms are at least perceived to be different.)

 

[gameboy900]

Not to mention platform specific mags that only deal with one of the systems. Like Xbox magazines with their version of the ad and PS2 magazines with theirs.

 

[Mr. Moustache]

I understand the platform specific mag issue, I almost put it in parenthesis after I went on a tyrade about how it won't affect marketing costs much. But like I said before, it's not going to seriousley hurt SEGA's bottom line, if at all. Racing games tend to do very well on the X-box.

And yes, I've seen the different ads for different systems and such. But Soul Calibur certainly had reason to have 3 different TV ads running since each featured the platform specific characters. But I'm not expecting SEGA to launch themselves into a huge multi-million dollar ad campaign for each system, the only reason they're making money right now is because they are being smart with the money they spend, and that wouldn't be smart, especially for a racing game. I doubt they'll have Spawn in the drivers seat on the X-box version.

My honest belief is that the game should be ported to all systems, even the GC, I think there is definately an untapped market for a good racing game besides mariokart and F-Zero on the GC and I believe Outrun 2 would do it some good, same goes for Virtua Fighter 4, Virtua Cop 3(they could liscense a 3rd party company to make a special gun for it), etc.