This is one of EA's biggest flaws. They invest insane amounts of money into a product without properly gauging how much revenue they'll actually need to make. They then pawn this off on the reception of the game instead of accepting that whoever signed off on that budget should be fired. This is a fatal flaw in ANY company. Failure to budget properly.Alandoril said:
It's the equivalent of insisting to hire three booth babes, TV and newspaper adds, a Cordon Bleu trained chef and using only premium meat in order to make, market and sell a $1 hotdog. Yes, the hotdogs may be delicious and the marketing is perfect so people will know its there, but you probably spent so much on the product you'll never get a return on investment.
This completely unrealistic mindset deserves to be punished. Anyone who thinks that's the IP's fault is blind to the realities of actually allocating appropriate funds to make and market a game. Seriously, can you think of many other companies who spend so much money on marketing? I don't know about you, but right now I see four adds on this page for Sims 3 (EA game). A banner at the top, two side banners, and a small "Learn more" video ad in the bottom right. This cost money and I'm happy that they're giving Escapist marketing money, but really? This is just one of many sites. EA doesn't know what they're doing. They think they can throw money at any problem to make more money.
It isn't to say that marketing is bad. It's just the degree to which they do it. There is diminishing returns at some point where more money thrown at a problem is just lost money. At least this is a gaming site.
