Over the past months Microsoft has hyped the Xbox 360 with double the intensity that they had on the original Xbox. Learning from the past, the company has decided to release their next generation console a year earlier than the competition. Their goal is to sell three-million consoles by the first year and by the look of things the company is right on track to meeting their expectations. From viral campaigns to expos, Microsoft has done everything to get gamers riled up for November 22, 2005. Thousands of impatient Xbox fans are waiting for the time to come but for now let’s take a look back at how Microsoft created the massive hype over the launch of the Xbox 360.
Viral campaigns are nothing out of the norm, since the days of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation era; developers have used this type of virtual quest to create early hype amongst gamers. Building upon the massive success of Ilovebees.com, which was created by Bungie to increase the popularity of Halo 2, Microsoft decided to develop another viral campaign, OurColony.net. By attaining different passwords through clues found in the pictures available on the website, Xbox aficionados were able to attain bits of information about the next generation console and its games from esoteric screenshots of Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero as well as the controller and the hard drive. Message boards all over the internet would have discussions about every shot released from OurColony.net, creating the exact attention that Microsoft wanted. Unfortunately the shot of the actual Xbox 360 unit was leaked to the media outlets before the website released its final bit of information by revealing the system and its features. It would not be surprising to see another viral campaign coming from Microsoft because as OurColony.net and Ilovebees.com has shown, people love to be tempted with juicy information and it is also a quick and efficient manner to attract a large portion of the gaming population.
Everyone makes mistakes but to hardcore gamers the MTV Xbox 360 Special was a massive error. Microsoft, instead of reaching out to the hardcore fan base took the program as an opportunity to attract the mainstream audience through one of the biggest (and so called hippest) TV networks, and it worked. Through the help of celebrity flash and “incredible fashion sense,†Microsoft was able to alienate its supporters and just like U2 did with the Ipod commercials, the company sold itself for the sake of attaining mainstream appeal. One can’t blame Microsoft though, they are running a business and if Sony would have not catered to the casual gamer, the PlayStation brand might have not been as powerful as it is today. The day after the MTV Special, Gamestop and Electronics Boutiques began taking preorders for the Xbox 360 quickly selling out of their initial stock (though they did not know many consoles they were going to get at the time) causing the majority of the pandemonium that we see today with gamers desperately seeking to secure an Xbox 360 at launch.
Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference was basically a rehash of the MTV Special but it still affirmed that the company was ready for the next generation of gaming. They had few surprises left in stock and even the announcement that Square-Enix was now developing games for the console did not manage to garner much attention, but a bigger Live service with better online options sold the console to those who already knew how fun it was to play multiplayer games online. There was one game that did catch everyone’s eye and that was Gears of War. The title was one of the few games that demonstrated the true power of the Xbox 360 unlike some of the “not so hot†games such as Perfect Dark Zero and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, which received lukewarm reception due to the disappointing initial screenshots. Gears of War quickly became the killer app for the console, and though it is set for release a year from now, it is one of the main reasons people have decided to buy Microsoft’s new console on day one. Though E3 2005 might have been an overall disappointment for Xbox fans, the Xbox 360 was still able to find a large amount of supporters due to games such as Gears of War and the ever popular Live online service.
It was not until about five months later that gamers finally got to see what the Xbox 360 was all about. The focus at X05 in Amsterdam was all about the games, and instead of just talking nonsense, Microsoft, had for the first time in a long while, substance to back up their claims. Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3, Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and the rest of the launch lineup were all shown in an almost complete form giving gamers the lasting impression that the Xbox 360 was going to have an incredible debut. The games looked the part of next generation titles and it also officially marked the beginning of the countdown to the Xbox 360 launch. X05 also revealed that there was plenty in stock for the console in the upcoming year with Crackdown, Mass Effect, and Too Human to look forward to. The event was able to create widespread hype due to the drought of Xbox 360 information after E3 2005 and it served as a wake up call for gamers to get excited. The Xbox 360 was almost coming!
Now that we are just a few days from launch (It’s almost too hard to believe that November 22 is almost upon us) that hype has reached epic proportions, in no small part due to the limited quantities of the console available on the first shipment. After all the millions of dollars spent in advertising the Xbox 360, Microsoft is in a prominent position in the video game industry. In a couple of days the company is going to hold the biggest console launch in history, with some consumers forced to wait until February to get their hands on the system. Years ago, few believed that the Xbox was going to become a success but the deafening hype created by the first entry into the next generation of gaming demonstrates just how far Microsoft has gotten over the past four years.
