European ERA : What should XBOX do to be more successful in EU ? (Except UK)

[GING-SAMA]

It is rather impressive the ratio of PS4 / XBO in Europe excluding UK.

Almost 1 xbox for 5 PS4 sometimes a lot more. Back in the PS360 era, xbox still had a healthy player base in Europe so I don't think Europe doesn't like XBOX but rather that XBOX doesn't work enough to expand its European target.

In terms of marketing presence, they are close to nothing, no Game Pass ads, although this is one of the number 1 reasons for being in the XBOX ecosystem, no ads on the XSX / XSS two months before their release.

Especially since now they have no more excuses, they have one of the largest first party networks in the industry so they will constantly have things to market.


I saw more Paper Mario Origami ads in 2 weeks than XBOX related ads over the past 3 years (excluding social networks, twitch, youtube). I wouldn't even talk about TLOU2 & Ghost of tshushima...

For me this is their biggest problem in Europe, I'm sure they are talented people but the Xbox marketing budget in Europe must be very, very low. Switch marketing is still aggressive even after 3 years.

 

[Raigor]

Get FIFA marketing deal and bundles; good luck with this

Games, Games, Games.

 

[Spine Crawler]

xbox needs more exclusive games

 

[Deleted member 2752]

They could sell their games for under 80€.

 

[LewieP]

FIFA on Game Pass day one would do well. I actually wonder if doing first-party sports, maybe even buying the PES name/Studio off Konami and investing hard in it could do the trick.

 

[Rhaknar]

They can't do much, Playstation is too ingrained in EU. People here say "playstation" like people said "nintendo" in the 80s. Its synonym for videogames. It is what it is. I guess getting marketing in Champions League and shit would help but I don't think they could ever pass it here tbh.

 

[IOTS]

Get FIFA marketing deal and bundles; good luck with this

Click to shrink...

They did that this gen, if I remember right. It did not work.

 

[Kuosi]

exclusive fifa

 

[sfear]

Maybe more JRPG (?)

 

[Doctor Phishshoe]

The weird thing is i was going throught the channels yesterday and saw an add for a MS game!!! Minecraft Dungeons.....but they only mentioned it for Nintendo Switch. It even had the Nintendo Commercials voice over like every other Nintendo commercial XD

 

[ShotyMcFat]

1. Buy EA
2. Make FIFA exclusive
3. ????
4. Profit

 

[nib95]

You have to imagine a few of those big Bethesda games will make a difference, especially Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout and Starfield.

 

[Duck-Zilla]

FIFA exclusively on GamePass.

 

[eebster]

The Zenimax deal and the value of Gamepass and the price of the Series S is already a great first step. A big part of the massive gap between the two consoles was the disastrous launch by the Xbox One. So the gap would have naturally narrowed anyway with a normal launch for the next gen consoles and will narrow even more with the Zenimax purchase.
What they need now are better story driven games like TLOU, God of War, Death Stranding etc. and just keep expanding the Gamepass catalogue. And just better marketing around Gamepass. I don't think any of my friends know anything about that. If I told them there is something like Netflix for gaming for just 10 bucks they'd certainly be intrigued. Microstoft needs to get this message across better

 

[Lyre]

More

- FIFA
- Techno
- Sex
- Alcohol
- Fun
- Exclusives
- Quality

Less

- Guns
- America
- Anti-consumer moves

 

[CliveLH]

Start by talking about Xbox. In France there is close to 0 ad for Xbox in general while PS5 is already sponsoring the national soccer league. You need to put Xbox Game Pass everywhere, in every talkshow.

You need to have a big budget on marketing around Game Pass. You would also need to get deals with Fifa and Call of Duty which are every year the most popular games.

Lastly, especially in France, you need more japanese games. We love jrpg and the FF16 exclusive deal alone is securing the french market for Sony.

Also : stop it with the dudebro/"old men trying to sell you a car" marketing. Stuff like the Inside Xbox Show with Major Nelson are horribly rated in france, I would even say hated.

 

[CalamityPixel]

Really good exclusives I guess, they have a good base to work from but they need those games that'll strike into the market.

 

[YozoraXV]

Buy EA and call it a day.

 

[ArmadilloGame]

Big marketing push for game pass and payment plan. MS's big advantage is price, especially as traditional gaming gets more expensive. A Series S has the potential to be a game changer if the right demographics know about it.

And get FIFA in the marketing too of course.

 

[RelaxItsJustMe]

I honestly don't know. Their brand isn't really looked upon that positive in many countries, often considered a joke. And PC gaming is a lot more popular in a ton of European countries compared to NA which pretty much makes Xbox borderline irrelevant.

Like often times they're just dead last behind PS, PC and Nintendo. And when a platform that's already more popular also gets all your games, how are you really supposed to combat that?

 

[Westbahnhof]

xbox needs more exclusive games

Click to shrink...

Probably this. I'm no console guy, but my anecdotally, God of War and Bloodborne were reasons why friends of mine all chose the PS4.
Great exclusives could give the new XBOX gen the much needed edge.

 

[Aveis]

Have a local store and all EU countries?
I still have to use a random adress from Germany and pay in euro on xbox
On psn they use my local currency and no shenanigans like that

 

[DreamRunner]

They'll never be popular in Europe if they don't have exclusive games, and by exclusive games I don't mean console exclusive, I mean REAL exclusive games.

 

[XVerdena]

Actually marketing your console could help

 

[Binabik15]

They can't do much, Playstation is too ingrained in EU. People here say "playstation" like people said "nintendo" in the 80s. Its synonym for videogames. It is what it is. I guess getting marketing in Champions League and shit would help but I don't think they could ever pass it here tbh.

Click to shrink...

That sort of changed for some during the PS360 years, but with PS4 domination I hear "hey, do play Xbox" = "do you play on console" less and less compared to "Playstation".

With a heavy pc gaming scene I'm not really sure what MS could do domestically, since their games are mostly on PC and in some cases even before the console release.

 

[Abi]

More

- FIFA
- Techno
- Sex
- Alcohol
- Fun

Less

- Guns
- Anti-consumer moves

Click to shrink...

I have some bad news..

 

[Linus815]

They did that this gen, if I remember right. It did not work.

Click to shrink...

it didn't work because XB1 was genuinely an unattractive console for most europeans.
It only launched in a select few countries in 2013, whereas PS4 launched almost everywhere.
It was more expensive than the PS4.
It was built around Kinect, which didnt recognize most languages.
It was built around TV, which was completely useless in Europe.

Having FIFA in the first year (or first 2 years?) was probably one of the very few reasons why the console took of at all.

If they tried again today, they'd probably do much better. And if you add day 1 gamepas to the mix, hooo boy.


But apart from Fifa, I think Europeans in particular are big fans of long form story driven adventure games, Xbox needs more of those (and well, there SHOULD be more of those, at the very least from Bethesda)

 

[jolenar]

At my train station (north of Stockholm) I've seen plenty of commercials for Playstation games over the years but nothing from Nintendo or Xbox.

Game pass for PC is talked about frequently on PC and game enthusiast forums but I have no idea if casual audience know about it.

 

[Snake Eater]

Make FIFA exclusive on the Xbox and it will be number 1 overnight

 

[TroutEater]

The playing field is more even now than ever, so what is still biting them is past neglect. What else they could do now, exclusives I guess.

 

[Fritz]

get some style. I am wondering how the latest design will fare against that awful PS5

 

[GING-SAMA]

They can't do much, Playstation is too ingrained in EU. People here say "playstation" like people said "nintendo" in the 80s. Its synonym for videogames. It is what it is. I guess getting marketing in Champions League and shit would help but I don't think they could ever pass it here tbh.

Click to shrink...

I know that but they can still do better.

Doubling their European audience would be more than achievable imo.

 

[Iacomus]

Marketing/advertising

From what i remember the issue they have is they believe EU is a English speaking countries as their primary language.

I've see a few ps ads and they all seem to take into consideration of other language and the cultures each country has. Not just a blanket 'ad'

 

[Couscous]

They bought Bethesha which is enough for me personally, but they need more FIFA exclusive content to get more Europeans to Xbox Series X.

 

[martincrimson87]

2 generations of piracy to wipe the competition.
Champions league ads

Profit

 

[PuppetMinion]

I think MS popularity will go up quite a bit. For a lot of people, consols are basically fifa boxes and MS series S looks really good in value in those terms imo

 

[2Blackcats]

Just games as usual.

Don't be morons helps too, "TV, TV, TV", "NFL", blah blah. Remember to be a global product and to sell it as one. Sucks watched a conference and they concentrate so much on the US market.


They'll certainly do a lot better this gen. The final years of the 360 set them up for a disastrous following gen.

 

[Abominuz]

It is marketing, i can actually say i cant remember if i ever saw an xbox add on TV or heard it on the radio. And Playstation and Nintendo has been rooted here for generations. It is difficult to overcome that. My whole childhood was Nintendo, Sega, Sony. It started to pick up in the 360 era and then they fucked up with the Xbox One.
what Sony and Nintendo do good, is that the focus is worldwide and MS is more american centered. With The Xbox One, we did not give a crap about the Tv, Tv stuff and there was no added valu. And an all digital console would suck for us, because in most EU countries we have a good return policy. If i buy a game and it sucks i can return it in 14 days. And more stuff like that they ruined the start of last gen with.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

Buy Nintendo, Sony's PlayStation division, EA to get the FIFA rights, Sega to get Football Manager, train simulators, farming simulators and a Premier League football team they can rename to Xbox United. Then maybe.

 

[MonadL]

How popular is Elder Scrolls and Fallout in continental Europe?

 

[starblue]

Buy Sony

 

[Couscous]

The FIFA exclusive content also needs to be marketed during the Champions League and other big football competitions.

 

[Santar]

Change it's name to Pleystation.

 

[DixieDean82]

The only way they could overtake PS in Europe would be to buy EA and get FIFA as an exclusive. Outside of that? Forget it.

 

[FarSight XR-20]

Spend A LOT MORE in marketing. There are tons of TV/Youtube ads from Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft, not much/none.

 

[Thera]

They can't do much, Playstation is too ingrained in EU. People here say "playstation" like people said "nintendo" in the 80s. Its synonym for videogames. It is what it is. I guess getting marketing in Champions League and shit would help but I don't think they could ever pass it here tbh.

Click to shrink...

Yep.

 

[Windu]

I saw more Paper Mario Origami ads in 2 weeks than XBOX related ads over the past 3 years (excluding social networks, twitch, youtube). I wouldn't even talk about TLOU2 & Ghost of tshushima...

Click to shrink...

As someone in the US, I rarely see any Xbox ads out in the real world as well. I don't watch TV though, so maybe they still advertise there. All the marketing I see is online. I think Microsoft just focuses most of their advertising on digital platforms.

 

[hanmik]

Treat them like Tier 1 people..

 

[crimilde]

They could start by having an official launch and official support, in my country, at least.
Sony has been investing a lot of money with PS4 in Romania, loads of ads on TV, in the metro, on buses. Campaigns. Promotions. Attendance at gaming conferences. People see PlayStation everywhere.

They even filmed a sick cover of Through The Valley on TLoU2's launch with a group well known for their traditional music:




Meanwhile, you can't even pre-order Xbox Series S/X right now because we have no stock allocated, and even if we could somehow, we still don't have an official store and need to jump through hoops to buy software for their machine. Even for GamePass you need to use Revolut and a fake address in a supported country. I just don't feel like investing in their platform if they don't invest in promoting themselves here.

 

[GING-SAMA]

Start by talking about Xbox. In France there is close to 0 ad for Xbox in general while PS5 is already sponsoring the national soccer league. You need to put Xbox Game Pass everywhere, in every talkshow.

You need to have a big budget on marketing around Game Pass. You would also need to get deals with Fifa and Call of Duty which are every year the most popular games.

Lastly, especially in France, you need more japanese games. We love jrpg and the FF16 exclusive deal alone is securing the french market for Sony.

Also : stop it with the dudebro/"old men trying to sell you a car" marketing. Stuff like the Inside Xbox Show with Major Nelson are horribly rated in france, I would even say hated.

Click to shrink...

100%

They need to market XGP like Netflix. This is why 15M subscribers without a major marketing campaign outside social networks I find it impressive.