Marketing players
Speechless.That was our reaction to the new feature Tecmo is pimping for the PlayStation 3 release of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. That's also the way the game company portrayed Japanese players in its online viral video, showing guys experimenting with the ability to control the movement of on-screen breasts by tilting their controllers.
Going back to the original Nintendo video game system, the Ninja Gaiden franchise has always been about Ryu, a sword-wielding ninja who combats super-sized enemies. The new game is really no different.
But while exploring marketing avenues for the product, Tecmo had a dilemma: The company released a very similar game for the Xbox 360 more than a year ago. That game, called Ninja Gaiden 2, was marketed as a bloody, gory action adventure, said Tecmo spokeswoman Kyoko Yamashita.
The developers decided to tone down the extreme violence for the PlayStation 3 audience and implemented mammary movement as a gimmick based on the underused Sony Sixaxis controller technology. Online marketing, too, shifted its focus to another taboo subject -- sex.
"Looking at the audience behind the 360 versus the PS3," Yamashita said, "360 has kind of a raw, very pro-American audience." The PS3, they determined, had less of a thirst for blood and perhaps more of a thirst for flesh.
While there are three female characters that players can control, the bulk of the game is spent playing as Ryu. Sorry, ladies, but there's no similar body-part-manipulation feature for the male protagonist.
Tecmo's Japanese marketing team crafted the online video. The American and European divisions jumped at the opportunity to reuse it because they believed it had universal appeal. (After all, there's no language or cultural barriers since the actors are too hypnotized to speak and most guys love those womanly assets.)
"We were very interested once we saw the concept," Yamashita said. "The marketing campaign itself is quite different."
If anyone questions the old adage "sex sells," we'll have an answer shortly after the game hits store shelves on Tuesday.
-- Mark Milian found September 25, 2009 at typepad.com
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