4 to One [Comm 296 Marketing Blog Post 5]
1 Million units sold.
Shares climb 3%.
1 day.
Tech giant Sony debuted it’s new flagship video game console, the Play-Station 4 on Friday Night and smashed records by hitting over 1 million units worth of sales in less than 24 hours. Priced at $399, the PS4 undercuts main competitor Microsoft’s Xbox One by $100 and steals the spotlight from Microsoft, converting legions of heartbroken Xbox gamers.
Why?
Marketing. Marketing. Marketing.
Aside from the blaring advantages that the console offers over its competitor such as the lack of online checks and enforced restrictions on the use of your disc-based games, Sony’s campaign and build-up of this new product has phenomenally strode closer to consumer hearts than its competitor. Since E3, Sony’s primary campaigning focus has been the distinguished market of avid gamers. While Microsoft has been aiming to appeal to a wider range of consumers and convert the Xbox One into an everyday living room essential, they are losing the battle for the existing pool of customers that give value and prestige to their product: the hardcore gamer.
Price: Competitive and profit-driven pricing schemes puts Sony far ahead of its competitor. Cheaper unit costs allow Sony to exploit this advantage.
Product: Quality of product and continued excellence in innovation and performance. Lack of online checks and enforced restrictions on the use of your disc-based games.
Place: Sony’s debut launched a few days earlier than Microsoft’s Xbox One, giving the company a huge advantage in capturing the hearts of the customers who are undecided between the two console giants by offering the opportunity to put a console in their homes at an earlier date.
Here’s a taste of Sony’s advertising scheme:
“We give [gamers] what they want. We don’t give them everything, because we don’t think they want everything,” PlayStation CMO Guy Longworth said, in an interview Tuesday.
Gamers — a typically irascible group — have lovingly embraced Sony’s advertisements and also the PS4 in response.
After 7 years of no new console releases from tech giants, this new product cycle for the 8th generation of gaming system sparked the upcoming era! While we still wait to see how Microsoft’s product market diversification process goes, Sony has already successfully built upon the trust that was established with its previous generation of gamers and aim to bring new gamers into the mix. Having already penetrated the consumer market, Sony finds opportunity to utilize word of mouth marketing amongst its consumers while Microsoft struggles to catch up, still unable to reach past the fence of their newly defined consumer base.
Sources:
http://invezz.com/news/equities/6833-sony-share-price-climbs-ahead-of-playstation-4-market-debut
http://www.businessinsider.com/ps4-day-one-sales-one-million-2013-11
http://adage.com/article/digital/playstation-4-marketing-focuses-gamers-unlike-xbox/242056/
http://kotaku.com/sony-just-smacked-the-xbox-one-in-the-mouth-512492046