remember_spinal
Banned
This is one crazy money hat. Over two years in the making 
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Final Fantasy 7 had a 30 million dollar marketing budget
- Thread starter remember_spinal
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remember_spinal
Banned
Yeah, it was when i learned i fucked up asking for a N64 for christmas
Power Pro
Member
And not a single one of them was the reason I learned of this game and played it. The idea of marketing perplexes me so much. I hate marketing, I hate being a "demographic" or being reduced to anything that guys in suits try to figure out how to sell to. I hate seeing commercials so much that I actively don't want something if I see it advertised too much.
nocsi
Member
Marketing is multi-faceted. Some marketing is intended to generate word-of-mouth and not directly interface with the intended targets. We're talking 1997 though. Sony did an amazing job because not only did they have to introduce JRPGs to the western world, they had to market it as being an experience that could be consumed by your average person. It's incredibly challenging to try and teach an audience about something they have never experienced.
I guarantee in 2022, you're not psychologically-immune to marketing, unless you're actually a bot that doesn't take any outside input.
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remember_spinal
Banned
Yeah, FF7 was a big gamble for sony back in the day, they put a lot of money into it and it paid off for both squaresoft and playstation.
Very tough barrier to make something with a lot of reading, menu’s and random turn based battle into something casuals could jump into.
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Cyberpunkd
Member
You are an exception, not a rule.
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
Pretty much.
ChorizoPicozo
Banned
Screwing Xbox even before existing.
A sign of a truly evil, anti-competitive company.
A sign of a truly evil, anti-competitive company.
Power Pro
Member
More than you know.
SSfox
Member
I asked for a Jaguar, i was such a Sega fan back then. This was the only time my brother was right to not listen to me.
Oddvintagechap
Member
Goddamn Sony wasn’t playing.
NightmareFarm
Member
delete this comment
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Punished Miku
Member
That is definitely more than I would have guessed. It was dark days for Nintendo fans.
01011001
Banned
lol, that's some low bar right there
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
$30M marketing for a game in 1997? That's insane.
Fart Knight
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Now we get to see Kratos in a football commercial.
remember_spinal
Banned
YeulEmeralda
Member
Videogames stopped being toys thanks to Sony.
Paperclip Killa
Banned
FF was already huge in Japan, it was only a gamble for the American release which wasn't as successful, but I bet did much better than what their internal expectations were.
Sony was smart to partner with Square.
With FF7 consoles were finally starting to see why PC game budgets were so bloated. 3D graphics combined with cinematics is expensive, and you need high sales to make up for it. This requires a big marketing campaign to achieve,
Nitty_Grimes
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Say it every time there is a FF7 thread but will say it again.
Not long after FF7 came out, my dad died suddenly. To try to take my mind off the stress my best mate bought me a copy of FF7 to 'escape into to try and take my mind off shit happening in real life'
This game man. Its why I have the tattoos on my arm. This helped me get through such a horrible time in my life.
Not long after FF7 came out, my dad died suddenly. To try to take my mind off the stress my best mate bought me a copy of FF7 to 'escape into to try and take my mind off shit happening in real life'
This game man. Its why I have the tattoos on my arm. This helped me get through such a horrible time in my life.
Thaedolus
Gold Member
Psh, it worked. I had an N64 at launch but absolutely had to have a PlayStation in 1997 after seeing those ads. There was nothing else like it at the time
SenjutsuSage
Banned
The first commercial I saw of this game was responsible for me immediately quitting the game upon playing it the first time and realizing it looked nothing like the trailer. I was like "What's this top-down miniature garbage? Where is the thing I saw in the commercials at?" I abandoned the game for about a year+ till every one of my friends at my elementary school was talking amongst themselves about all the different badass moments and adventures they were getting into in the game, which made me realize that I shouldn't be disrespecting the story and art part of it so much by wanting it to look like some kind of movie from what I saw in the commercials.
Borrowed my friend's copy who had already beaten the game, and my mind was just blown. I would eventually save up my lunch money daily for about a week to buy it from him altogether. I had to have it if he were willing to sell. And that's how this became one of my favorite videogames of all time.
Borrowed my friend's copy who had already beaten the game, and my mind was just blown. I would eventually save up my lunch money daily for about a week to buy it from him altogether. I had to have it if he were willing to sell. And that's how this became one of my favorite videogames of all time.
EruditeHobo
Member
Those ads convinced me to get a PS1 & FF7. Converted me as a fan, that's for sure.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
This was me too.
Thankfully I managed to find some poor schmuck at school who was willing to swap his PS1 for my N64.
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yurinka
Member
This is one crazy money hat. Over two years in the making
I neighbor's dog estimated the marketing campaign to be 32049720 millions. But yes, for that age 30M for FFVII makes sense.
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SenjutsuSage
Banned
And then when NWO vs World and those other amazing N64 wrestling games dropped you wanted it back?
Especially the first big WWF/WWE game!
Interface23
Member
So you were such a big sega guy you asked for Atari. Got it lol
TransTrender
Gold Member
That's like movie level marketing budget for a summer blockbuster type of money for back then.
Fuz
Banned
Captain Toad
Banned
Ah, you THINK you're not effected by marketing. Trust me. A ton of the purchases you've made were effected by marketing. Way more than you'll ever know.
Power Pro
Member
I agree that you're probably right. And it's still probably true to a point, but the budgets for marketing are still blown way out of proportion compared to what is actually needed. In the case of Final Fantasy 7, it was one of my first RPGs, but it had zero to do with marketing, at least on my end. I had never seen a game like it, and I saw it at a friend's house, and I knew I wanted to play it myself. You could say maybe marketing led to him buying it, and that's why I bought it, but I still don't think that's the case. He was just a spoiled uber nerd whose parents bought him every RPG and had been doing it since the NES. So he didn't need to be marketed on FF7 to buy it.
Maybe I'll still get something cuz it looks cool, but I like to think I've grown as an adult, and I don't give into marketing as much anymore. Especially with how egregious marketing has gotten as I've gotten older. When I was younger, you could go to a movie theater, and you saw some trailers before the show, and that's it. Now you go into a movie theater, and they bombard you with so many damn commercials when I thought I was paying to see a movie. The fact that they keep trying to sell us stuff after they've taken our money just makes me mad, and I will purposely not buy a lot of the crap they show commercials for at such an insane rate.
Knightime_X
Member
I think it helped A LOT showing zero gameplay. All FMV.
As hyped I was for ff7 I was not prepared for hooves as hands.
As hyped I was for ff7 I was not prepared for hooves as hands.
Captain Toad
Banned
Maybe you. I was already a big Final Fantasy fan before VII, so I didn't need marketing either.
But, look at Final Fantasy before and after that marketing campaign. It was a relatively niche franchise and then turned into one of the largest.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
They said 2 years in the making. LOL!!!
remember_spinal
Banned
I was a final fantasy fan also which is why I got a N64 cause I assumed the franchise was gonna continue to be on Nintendo lol
Captain Toad
Banned
Yeah, I remember being sad when I heard it wasn't.
Solidus_T
Member
Not quite. There were also issues with publishing the game and to an extent, development due to a lack of funds. Sony really did save them from closing down.
remember_spinal
Banned
Sony saved squaresoft on multiple occasions, which is why they seem so loyal to them now.
Solidus_T
Member
Yeah, and Square didn't necessarily make good decisions with their money even before Sony stepped in. It's the reason why so many of their greatest games were unfinished and neglected during development. That Final Fantasy Spirits Within movie ruined so many games.
Looking at the godly Xenogears, Chrono Cross, SaGa Frontier (eventually they released the remastered version which is complete!) and even Chrono Trigger among others.
I still loved the games that resulted from their partnership with Sony. Brave Fencer Musashi is a must play game in my opinion.
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Davesky
Member
I remember clearly the day I picked it out in the game store back in 1998. I wanted Tekken 3 but hadn't realised it was still a few weeks away from being released so told I could buy another game instead. There was nothing fancy about the EU cover just the logo over a white background, and I knew next to nothing about the game. I did buy PlayStation magazines every month so maybe unconsciously picked up on the hype, and probably overheard friends in school talking about it but something convinced me right there and then that I had to buy it, even more so than Tekken 3 which I had been hyped and waiting months for. My older brother even tried to warn me against getting the game when he saw he looking at the back cover, telling me the real game was nothing like that just the 'summons' whatever that meant but I didn't listen to him.
When I first played it I immediately got stuck at the scorpion sentinel boss because of the translation error and ended up lying at the bottom of my cupboard for months with a cracked game case, thinking it was the worst money ever spent, but something eventually made me go back and give it another try. Even when nearly giving up on it at the motor ball boss, because I hadn't yet discovered that you could equip materia and use magic, I somehow had to keep playing. My brother ended up loving the game as well watching me play it. Clearly the marketing campaign worked, but also word of mouth as for many people there was nothing like it that had ever came before.
When I first played it I immediately got stuck at the scorpion sentinel boss because of the translation error and ended up lying at the bottom of my cupboard for months with a cracked game case, thinking it was the worst money ever spent, but something eventually made me go back and give it another try. Even when nearly giving up on it at the motor ball boss, because I hadn't yet discovered that you could equip materia and use magic, I somehow had to keep playing. My brother ended up loving the game as well watching me play it. Clearly the marketing campaign worked, but also word of mouth as for many people there was nothing like it that had ever came before.