Binary Domain Official Thread of Nagoshi Nagoshter

[George]

Yeah, the one I use for the podcast doesn't work for shit with voice commands. After a few hours of tweaking, I just gave the fuck up.

My friend does wholesale, I'll contact him if he will hook me up with a Turtle Beach headset.

[Aki-at]

By my calculations, UK sales stand at around 4k - 6k, which is terrible when you consider Rise of Nightmare did better. If SEGA Europe/America keep this up, better not expect SEGA Japan to attempt any global brands in the future. I just do not understand it either, Binary Domain is clearly something that could do quite well in the West, or at the very least, better than where it is now.

Edit: Seeing as this is my first post, I guess I'll go ahead and say "Hello!" Nice to meet you all, and hopefully we can get in a few games of Binary Domain! (Hi Aki!)

Hey there Covert! Good game that day, shame about those damn crabs, quite glad I managed to do that one round all by myself though haha. Robots certainly are much more dangerous in multiplayer than singleplayer thats for sure, mind if I add you on PSN?

[ROJM]

Has Segabits ever tried to approach a marketing person from Sega for an interview? It seems that Sega's marketing get's bashed from pillar to post on these forums, it would be interesting to actually ask them the hard questions. Sega probably doesn't want to give too much away but it would be good to actually get a conversation going to see the reasons they felt BD shouldn't get a lot of spending for marketing etc.

One thing that's important to note is that games are given set budgets for marketing not by the Marketing people themselves, but by the management. If they are only given a shoe-string budget to spend on BD then theres not a lot they can really do, and it's unfair to berate them for not having TV campaigns etc which would cost a fortune.

Of course this just directs the anger towards management instead, but again it would be good to get some insight.

But that's only true in Japan, it doesn't really apply to sega west. It sure as hell didn't back in the genesis/megadrive days. Sega Japan has been amping this title for nearly a year now, they've even given Nagoshi his own studio to help launch this title. They do all that just to have a non existant ad campaign in the UK and America because they didn't give Sega west enough money? The same Sega west i may add that's been buying new studios and setting them up in the last 6 months?
Sega west has always been able to set their own campaign budgets and let's face it Sega is still one of the bigger companies out there so they have the money to advertise. But they obviously seem to think that advertising is putting up trailers on the internet where the people they need to reach to don't go on you tube to check out game trailers. Or like TA said go with easy choices like SONIC and even ALIENS VS PREDATOR that got advertised on TV. And that campaign was used effectivly in the UK because it was advertised during a film season of Aliens on a british film and tv channel. Or idiotic choices like MADWORLD being advertised during Smallville. Wrong audience at the wrong time, when they could have advertised it during the same time as escape from new york was being shown on another channel, which would have been cheaper and the target audience would have been watching. Stupid decisions has marred at least the british side of things and from what i heard the american side of things isn't much better, especially from what i heard about what happened with ALPHA PROTOCOL. 

And it isn't a management thing. This is a marketing dept. thing and it has been a major problem for a while now. As i mentioned before, Nagoshi had a big bust up over Sega PR guys over YAKUZA when the game was meant to debut at E3 2005 but he decided against it because they "didn't get it." and did his own press conference a few months later.  And we all saw how they got it when the terrible localisation of YAKUZA finally appeared.
Nintendo is going to market RHYTHM THIEF R when its released so we will see how well that title does. if it does do well it would really be the final insult,that nintendo knows how to market a sega game better than sega themselves.

[ROJM]

Hey ROJM, that's dissapointing to say the least... I agree that SEGA really isn't knowing what they're doing. I mean even if the marketing would cost too much money in order for binary domain to make profit, the IP needs recognition and alot of IP start this way to go big with the sequel. Dead space is a great example of that.

But if I may ask, for what region/country is  that? The game has been getting alot of positive reactions, and sometimes word of mouth can help a game as well.

Anyway, still very sad

Its Britain. The third biggest games market and in Sega's case their biggest market in who buys the most games of their brand. And that's what makes it worst. Sega has always had a good showing in europe across the board, yet their biggest game to date fails in britain. god knows how it did in Spain, portugal, france which besides britain are the other traditional sega strongholds sales wise.

Ruby was asking for the fans to talk about Yakuza DS for all friends on SEGA official forum, then i said:

And Ruby answered me:


I respect Ruby a lot, but the fans can't do miracles.

Unfortunatly that's the type of garbage you will have to get use to at the good old sega forums,SP. You're correct what can one fan do when a company with millions in the bank can do much more than they are actually doing.

Sega West market so badly they have pretty much killed off a bunch of potential great series...
Vanquish, Valkyria Chonicles and now Binary Domain. They could have all been huge, At least Bayonetta managed to escape their nonsense and strike out on word of mouth.

Come to think of it BAYONETTA was never advertised on the telly, was it.Lucky indeed.

[Aki-at]

I'd also like to add, just look at the excitement from SEGA themselves. Go to SEGA's official blog and see how many posts there are for Binary Domain, only 12. There is no one in SEGA's blogging staff that is drumming up any excitement for it, Sonic 4 Episode 2 already has 11 posts! Valkyria Chronicles all have more than Binary Domain and its more than likely Binary Domain will not break past 20 posts.

Blog posts are not an important part of marketing at all, but it does show even more the apathy SEGA West has for this title.

[Barry the Nomad]

I'm surprised SEGA Blog has not written about the game a lot more. They're in a very unique position: they're the SEGA Blog! Writing a BD article wouldn't take away from the marketing budget, in fact aside from the time an employee spends writing up a blog post, it's free marketing. Better yet, SEGA Blog could repost articles from blogs like SEGAbits or link readers to them.

I really think SEGA West's employees just aren't fans of the game, so they don't post about it as much as other titles.

They should really bring on guest writers from the community. Pay them with merch or free games.

[SEGA_Portuguese]

I'd also like to add, just look at the excitement from SEGA themselves. Go to SEGA's official blog and see how many posts there are for Binary Domain, only 12. There is no one in SEGA's blogging staff that is drumming up any excitement for it, Sonic 4 Episode 2 already has 11 posts! Valkyria Chronicles all have more than Binary Domain and its more than likely Binary Domain will not break past 20 posts.

Blog posts are not an important part of marketing at all, but it does show even more the apathy SEGA West has for this title.

Also, one day before the european release, they were more worried in talk about the Sonic 4 trailer and Jet Set Radio trailer. Reallly, both Sonic 4 and JSR are still far from the release date, why they chose the day before the release date for BD to talk about those games? And in the day for the american release, they were talking about the grafitti contest for JSR.

Everything about the marketing for Binary Domain was so strange that is hard to understand. I saw a dude on twitter saying that, he works in a game place and he said that they have very few copies of BD because nobody did a pre-order, so they was like "all right, this game will bomb, let's not stock too much copies". This is the only reason i can see, two months before the release the pre-orders was like 200 or 300 copies, so SEGA just gave up the game. I'm not saying this is right, but is the only reason i can find.


Ah, and Barry, i was not joking on the comments section, you guys really did a better job in the marketing than SEGA did. SEGA should hire SEGABits people for the marketing.

[ROJM]

Please Aki, tell me you are kidding.

I've got a feeling they're saving their budget for ALIENS COLONIAL MARINES. That's the only possible explanation. Which means if its true that Sega west is deliberatly screwing this game over. This would never have happened under Kalinske's day. He could pardon the expression make a turd look like gold  with the hype and marketing that some games had even though many people at the time knew the game wasn't up to scracthe.

Look, Segabits has some sway these days, I dunno if its possible to get some interview with A sega PR guy like MM suggested  or better yet highlight the problem with Sega and their marketing department. I really do feel that some sort of attention needs to be brought onto this. Following TA's sentiment enough is enough already. If Sega PR can't do their job its time somebody embarrases them to do it. I don't want to see a game like this go into the hole of no return like many good games this gen from Sega

[CovertVector]

Hey there Covert! Good game that day, shame about those damn crabs, quite glad I managed to do that one round all by myself though haha. Robots certainly are much more dangerous in multiplayer than singleplayer thats for sure, mind if I add you on PSN?

Sorry for the late reply. And I agree, the robots definitely hit harder in multiplayer than in singleplayer. Also, yes, feel free to add me on PSN! Maybe we can get another game in soon.

[Ben]

Yeah but I would expect this site more than most to be talking about this game, but even this site is a letdown about this brilliant game.

We have done features on the game, as Barry has pointed out, as well as posting all the released trailers and news. Truthfully, there hasn't been a lot of that going on throughout Binary Domain's development, something you can talk to Sega West about. 


(Posts on the Sega blog do little, I don't think non-Sega fans read the Sega blog, and you really need the success of more than just fans of a publisher to sell a new IP.)

Come to think of it BAYONETTA was never advertised on the telly, was it.Lucky indeed.

Bayonetta actually did get a TV commercial in North America...it wasn't great, but it helped put the game's name out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPJTf01_W1Q

[Psycho Echidna]

I tend to agree with Joe. The game breathes Sega (I/we loved) through all its aspect : ambiance , story, soundtrack, existing gameplay with sega spin...

The game even gets recognition via couple of gamers forums.

Another stupid step from Sega west in my eyes is the removal of RGGG logo at the boot of the us/eu game. There is some odd dynamic between soj and soa/soe on this game and this is getting reflected in the pr approach.

Sad as this games cries for a second opus...

[Team Andromeda]

unless Sonic isnt involved you don't get an 80 page talkback. You can't have a proper discussion on VF or any non sonic sega game without someone mentioning sonic this or that.

Yeah, Kind of a poor show .

ell unless Sonic isnt involved you don't get an 80 page talkback. You can't have a proper discussion on VF or any non sonic sega game without someone mentioning sonic this or that.

Not on about profits , more about a game SEGA it's self made. To me Van was just a game SEGA picked up and published, nothing more .

TA, Sega is a centralised operation nowadays, SOJ has more control over Sega west

Well its worse now than ever . I've not seen one single add for BD or even a Magazine ad .

I won't disagree with that apart i'd say is the best Sega produced game since ORTA and the best Sega game i've played since RGG and that's down to originality or offering new elements in a estabilshed genre. Even though i don't think its a real finished product

Oh its a close call with Yakuza II which was just SEGA at its very best . It's own spin and pushing the platform to its limits . Can only imagine what the same team could do with a sequel to Binary Domain , give how much they improved Yakuza II over Yakuza .

Shame SEGA inept PR have all but made sure we'll never find out

[Ben]

Just felt compelled to write a blog post about what I thought could have been done far better here with marketing this game, thought I'd post it here to see if it adds to the discussion;

Or you can read it in blog format here;

http://nintendosega54.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post-binary-domains-sales-woes-and.html

It's never an easy thing to sell a new property. Looking back at Binary Domain's ride to release, it was certainly on a road rife with ups and downs. The game's first trailer was not received well, to put it mildly. The script, voice acting, and character designs, often a tricky thing with games coming from Japan, all came under immediate scrutiny, and for a different reason than is often the case; this was a game that tried, maybe too hard, to appeal to Western tastes. It was a game intended as a worldwide hit, and probably a new franchise for Sega, whose own Toshihiro Nagoshi (Yakuza, Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX) headed up its development. But even so, very little was done in the West to establish and promote Binary Domain as a must-have title. Though future trailers unquestionably got better, this never was positioned as a potential hit, its marketing never established its own identity, and it didn't, I feel, do enough to highlight its distinguishing features and to make it stand out from the crowded market of third person shooters.

Once released, reports of modestly successful sales in Japan were clouded a good deal by what can only be described as a complete sales tragedy in the UK, and the game is already being discounted at several retailers in North America; never a good sign, especially for a title developed for worldwide tastes. Binary Domain, it's sad to say, was an example of the difficulty often experienced by publishers to release and promote new franchises, especially when a Japanese studio is attempting it in the West. This is what I personally feel could have been done better in this case. Keep in mind, I haven't played this game beyond the demo (Mass Effect 3 came out this month, more on that later) so this is coming, I'd like to think, from a place of non-bias. I'm a gaming (and gaming industry) fan and a Sega fan, certainly not one with marketing experience or the knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes at companies like Sega. But this is what I feel, as an observer, were the flaws in the marketing of Binary Domain and many other new franchises which stumble out of the gate.

Target Demographic
Before anything else is accomplished, before a game is even finished with its development, I feel that deciding a target audience should always be the first step. If this is accomplished early on, it then allows a publisher to immediately begin to focus on interesting this audience all throughout its development. Binary Domain's focus was always tricky; was it targeting fans of Japanese games or fans of Western shooters? Was it targeting sci fi heads or the more mainstream Gears of War fans who likely think of sci fi as nerdy? It really was just never clear what type of game this was, with some trailers highlighting a heavy focus on story while others showed off Binary Domain's various gamaplay systems. But little was here that made this game pop out to anybody who wasn't already looking out for it. And very little to alone attract any sort of strong following in any particular demographic.

Take a game like Skylanders, for example. For all intents and purposes, this was a new IP that just happened to feature Spyro the Dragon; the planned sequel will be removing Spyro from its title entirely, which just goes to show how much the Skylanders have become their own entity. Never was an effort made to cater to Spyro fans, and I definitely never saw any commercials for Skylanders during the shows that I watch on TV, but the kids the game was targeting all had seen them and were well aware of its release. Activision has clearly managed to market well to their target demographic of 8-13 year old kids, and the game has become a massive hit. Had Sega West picked a demographic for Binary Domain and focused on appealing to that group, rather than the sometimes confusing "who is this game for" marketing direction that we ultimately received, I think we would have had a stronger-selling title.

The Game Itself
To be fair, not all of this may be Sega West's fault. Some aspects of Binary Domain's confusing transition to overseas markets may have more to do with its own developers. It would definitely surprise me if Sega West was not asked for any input throughout the development of this game, especially with the developers' focus on Western markets, but then again, that's the only conclusion that I could reach when I first saw the laughably stereotypical and overly "macho" cast of characters. People, especially gamers, tend to be cynical, especially when they see noticeable attempts to be "catered to." From the start this was a stumbling block with Binary Domain and though I definitely don't believe that the West should have any input on games being developed for Japan, or a large amount of input on Japanese-developed games in general, a game being made for Western audiences I feel should have been graced with a little bit of at least, "hey, I don't think these characters will go over well with the audience you're trying to attract." The second your potential fanbase thinks "there's a 3rd rate Gears of War," then your game's in trouble.


Delay and no follow-up

What I found so strange about Binary Domain was that the amount of media coverage it was receiving didn't increase as it neared release. You wouldn't have known, from Sega's and the media's treatment of the game, that this was a major title. Instead, I'd compare its handling to that of a small Japanese title coming from a company like Xseed. When a game hits its release date and arrives in the marketplace, that's when the publisher is expected to follow its hype up with a marketing blitz, or at least a moderate bit of awareness raised. Binary Domain didn't have this, and in fact, its situation was complicated by a last minute delay from January to February, which made the little ad campaign it did have (which was mainly focused on internet ads) completely worthless. Internet advertisements are booked far in advance, and I remember being surprised when I began seeing Binary Domain advertisements with relative frequency on game sites like IGN and even movie sites like Comingsoon.net....back in January, after the game had been announced as delayed until the next month. February then rolled around, and at that point, nothing.

Delaying a game at the last minute is rarely a good business move, especially when it's moved into a month where it then finds itself in competition with the highly-anticipated Mass Effect 3, which likely stole a good portion of its potential audience, myself included, I have to say. Not a great move.

TV campaign

Television is of course an expensive brand of advertising and not one that works for all types of games. There is a demographic, though, that TV advertising has done very well with, and that's with games like Gears of War; who doesn't remember those chilling commercials? Certainly action game fans did, and that new franchise did incredibly well.

Marketing's important, there's no doubt about it. By their nature, people cling to what they know. If they enter a store to buy a video game, it's likely going to either be a franchise that's proven itself with them in the past, or a game that "they've heard of." If they haven't "heard of" Binary Domain, why buy it? Commercials are a big way people "hear of" video games, in my experience, and while Binary Domain may not have deserved a gigantic advertising campaign, at least something to get its name out there would have helped. Bayonetta had a North American TV commercial and that game did fairly well here for such a Japanese title. It helps, more often than not.

To sum up

It's never easy to guarantee success with new IP. It's entirely possible that Binary Domain could have had all these things and still flopped majorly on these shores, we don't know. Some things, like its decidedly less-than-great Metacritic average, are areas that the game's actual developers over in Japan bear the bulk of the responsibility for. But these general failings on the part of Western publishers to know how to market or to understand Japanese-developed IP are very common. But it's my opinion anyway that you never know unless you try, and when a company like Sega has Sonic to fall back on financially, it would have been nice if they had tried a little harder with Binary Domain.

[Centrale]

I think handling the PR in-house might be the problem.  You can bet publishers like EA and Activision don't handle this stuff with internal staff.  They hire agencies who specialize in designing and orchestrating mass media campaigns.

[CosmicCastaway]

GameTrailers just posted their review of Binary Domain:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-binary-domain/727775