Originally Posted by Shola Akinnuso
I'm too lazy to click back, but some of you were insulting ZeroHero - which doesn't help. For a moment, I was almost insulted by Zero's post until I realized that he really, REALLY believed what he typed...
1. Dude, as a black guy that LOVES and grew up on hip-hop culture, I had to accept that, for better or worse, 'rap' culture is pretty much the dominant form of youth expression today. That's ALL youth. It used to be ROCK, then PUNK.
That said, if the dominant form of expression is this 'urban rap thing', then you'd better use your marketing savvy to tap into it. Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians - EVERYBODY speaks that. Everything else is the alternative language. THIS is why your marketing avenue - particularly with videogaming - is urban slanted. This has NOTHING to do with grabbing the 'blacks and latinos'. To be honest, if Microsoft was aiming for Blacks and Latinos to make up the majority of their sales (following your logic) they would've sold less numbers than Gamecube. As somebody posted earlier, most of the MTV's 'urban' market...is middle American and white.
2. You also made a comment about 'sports games'. The problem is that only the people like you and I, those that frequent game sites and give a damn about Miyamoto, Kojima, or Itagaki, play anything *other* than sports titles. While we're trying to conquer Ninja Gaiden Black, the rest of the world - those that make up the majority of gaming sales, they're playing Madden, Tiger Woods, SIMS, Grand Theft Auto, or Tetris. Yeah, If I'm marketing a new system, you'd better believe I'm going to grab that sports market and play the urban angle, too! Really, when was the last time you saw ANY system try the 'punk rock' angle on, say, FOX? The channel of youth is MTV.
3. Lastly, it's really hard to tell the average person that a system sucks when , if you ask the average person and the retort is, "it's more powerful", you can't readily refute that. Dude, it *is* more powerful. Graphically, it was a powerhouse. Joe Average doesn't care that it doesn't have We Love Katamari on it. And yes, it DID have the best sports games. You could play most of them via Xbox Live. Does that make the game 'better'? To Joe Average, better graphics + better online probably equals better game. I'm not being an ass, or saying that there's TRUTH in that necessarily. I'm just showcasing perception. If Pepsi and Coke can get greater sales and marketing brand awareness by pimping Stars and Sports Icons, you'd better believe Microsoft can. Hell, it got Bill Clinton elected...
Hoped that helped.
--Shola A.
