FIFA 13 Marketing/Distribution

ProgrammeSummer-Autumn 2012

AKA How many times can we make Mr Howard pay for our product?

1. Preorder FIFA 13 (Summer 2012)

• DISTRIBUTION: Choice between: “brick and mortar” retail stores

• Or online retailers• MARKETING: Flashy Press release to

gaming press detailing the pre-order “Ultimate Edition” – extra £££ for extra bonus features, in-game currency, extra ‘trading card’ packs

Box art announced – August 24th

• In the final week of August, the EA marketing team deliver glossy Press Releases to the gaming press – as well as sports press - announcing the footballers to be featured on the box.

• A Twitter campaign in the days leading up to who would join Messi on the box cover, with conversations containing the #FIFA13 hashtag predicting – example of viral marketing, ‘word of mouth’ and cross-media convergence

• LOCALISATION NOTE: Although Lionel Messi appears on all versions of the game, he is accompanied by 1 or 2 players from the region in which the game is being sold ie. In England, Joe Hart and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

2. Soundtrack announced

• MARKETING CONVERGENCE: In an example cross-media convergence, the FIFA 13 soundtrack is announced in a flashy Press Release to the music press, with the NME website revealing the news on September 6th.

2. Download Demo

• The Fifa 13 demo is made available from Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN on September 11th 2012.

• DISTRIBUTION: 100% digital. To see the significance of this: the demo of GTA1 came on a CD-Rom stuck to the front of PC Gamer!

• MARKETING: The announcement of the demo is another excuse to drop a Fifa-related press release in to the folk at Official Xbox Magazine and PlayStation Magazine.

• The demo has to be able to download without server problems or this will prove a PR backfire for EA

EA announce EA Season Ticket

• 7th September – EA announce the EA Sports Season Ticket

• Purchasing this ‘ticket’ for £19.99 gives early access to a digital version of FIFA 13 one week earlier than the retail boxed edition.

• This was downloadable from Saturday 22nd September, with the downloaded copy of the game expiring when the retail copy launches.

• The ticket also gives a discount to FIFA DLC over the next 12 months

EA Sports Web Apps

• EA are great at cross-media convergence. They useTwitter to drum up a buzz, as well as act as a fast Customer Support service. They also have a tie-in Facebook game Superstars which is an enjoyable stand-alone title as well as a glorified advert for its parent game

• EA Web Apps allows access to the game’s Ultimate Team – a glorified card trading game within Fifa – where players can buy and sell players and organise teams when not at their console. They can then “share” or “retweet” what they get up to! This is another example of cross-media convergence and viral-marketing.

My FUT13 team… 5 days before official release day!

Fifa Ultimate Team - Currency• Traditionally the ‘payoff’ for publishers was day one – you buy

the game, they get your money• Now, the day one purchase is often only the start• Fifa Ultimate Team uses microtransactions of small amounts,

lending from the world of freemium/free-to-play games.• Previous years would have gamers purchase Gold Packs with

Microsoft Points – the currency of Xbox Marketplace. This year, EA Sports are introducing their own in-game currency: FIFA points.

• These are points purchased using real-world money which can then be used to purchase packs of virtual trading cards to build up FUT squads.

As with many free-to-play

games, the packs can be bought

using the points earned in-game

through hard work and progression,

but offers the quicker route to

success as an alternative.

Your task:

• Your task is to research the marketing campaign of the game you looked at last week.

• You can either post this as a Blog post or a PowerPoint to upload to your Blog later on.