These Xbox commercials are pointless. No game footage, no coverart, no pictures of the system, no mention of specs, or license support, no music, no anything....

I know that abstract commercials get alot of attention, but these commercials suck. I get annoyed everytime one comes on.

*Sigh*

The Gameplay commercials are coming on the 11th. I have already seen the Halo commercial. It is badass.

Good to know these green X things are going away... I mean i get the point, logo-association.. but sheesh. overkill.

Im just happy theyre putting their $$$$$ muscle behind the console. Even if the commercials suck it still bodes well for the level of commitment.

Then again they dont have to sell me.

Actually, what's kinda scary is that for their $500 million, MS has probably gotten a crack team of advert makers together, and based on all available research, this is what turned out to be the most effective teaser. At any rate, adreview.com has the full gameplay ads for Halo, DOA3, Project Gotham and Oddworld available for viewing. I'm looking forward to seeing the Halo ad on tv, it's really sweet.

Tuan Jim

If you guys remeber the sony commercials in 95 they had no game play and I think that system sold OK.

PS9 anyone? That one was annoying, especially in the midst where no one could get a PS2.

The first and only one I keep seeing is the one where that green spot is in the center of the TV for the whole thing and that guy is saying stuff like "clothes move like real clothes", its soooooo annoying arrghh, even more than the singing wrestlers from the GBA commercial(which I didn't care for either), but the most annoying game commercial is the first Spyro the dragon one with the sheep, they must have played it every commercial break and the sheep was kinda scary looking .

how come i have not seen any of these commercials. when do they air. then again i have been trapped in my room studying incecently for the past week.

i have seen the gamecube commercials though. i really do not get the one with the goth girl. its funny that nintendo is only spending around 75 mill for advertising.

Here's an interesting article on ZDnet:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdhpnews01

According to that, the $500M is budgeted to be spent over the next 18 months which means what we've seen so far is only the beginning. Also, they say Nintendo has a $450M budget to be spent for promoting GBA and GC.

Given that we have 3 major players vying for market share over the coming months, I expect we'll be inundated with plenty of commercials and promotional events.

I went to go see heist last night and they had the long kick ass game cube commercial gothic chick and all .

Just watching Simpsons and the first commercial break had the new Oddworld gameplay ad. Looked pretty good overall.

Tuan Jim

I wish they had given me 5 mill, I could have done a better job than that commercial easily.

The Dead or Alive one was pretty funny last night.

I highly doubt that you could have.

No offense, but what you fail to realize is that the ads aren't placed towards "hardcore" gamers. Microsoft's goal is 50 million units in homes (as stated in Wired). With that goal, one can be pretty sure that they are using the name association technique. They obviously are doing a good job, just based on the amount of people who have come up to me (knowing that I have worked in selling games in the past) and asked me "what is this XBox that I keep seeing on TV?" After gaining that initial question, that is when you answer the question via commercials. Frankly, this is a quite common form of advertising that has proven to be extremely effective. By putting different versions of the name placement ad, you satisfy the need for "different" commercials, but give the same idea. Once you begin showing gameplay, those who wondered what it were then get the chance to understand.

Ad agencies and ad exec's exist for a certain reason. Believe me, I can guarantee that these commercials were run in front of test groups many times, and this series is what scored the highest interest level among all the ones that were pitched. Microsoft is going after what they hope will be the driving force.

Why advertise to someone that already has their mind made up?

Well stated. Focus groups are composed exactly of Microsoft's target audience. They'll take a group that hasn't heard of XBOX and bombard them with commercials. They'll take another group that enjoys playing videogames and do the same thing with them using the same material. They'll continue to do this changing only one variable at a time, for instance the next group will be of a specific age bracket, and so forth until they come up with the desired product (i.e. the commercial).

I know about this because I use to do this, but not for videogames, and you need a lot of money to make this sort of research work effectively.