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IMHO: Chips in the Back Of Their Necks
By Bob "Groucho" MarksThe Point, At Last
Look, I know that I'm going to be called some kind of Microsoft-phobe, and one who is disloyal to the Simulation cause. Hell, I've dealt with worse than that from better people, so stow that.
The ability of brute-force marketing to sell the perception over actual substance is an easily documented phenomenon. One only has to look to the current plague of boy bands and Pop Singer Barbies infesting the music scene to prove that obvious point. Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 2 is not that big a deal, folks. On the other hand, Blue Byte's IL-2 Sturmovik will indeed smoke every conception you've had about flight sims, and their marketing blitz will apparently consist of an email campaign.
Obviously, Blue Byte realized that the odds for success in a toe-to-toe tangle with Microsoft in the Shelf Wars were horribly stacked against them. CFS2 is, after all, the best-selling flight sim as of this moment, and just last week was way up in the top five selling PC games across all genres. Was this a result of great gameplay, AI, and campaign? No. Was it a result of a grassroots, word-of-mouth hysteria about an awesome product? No.
No, it was done by purchasing most of the available real estate on software retailers' shelves. It was done through the full-page, full-bleed, two-page-spread print ads for CFS2 that have appeared in every aero weenie magazine I can think of: from Smithsonian's Air & Space, to Flight Journal, to even that most sacrosanct of aerospace trade magazines, Aviation Week & Space Technology. Despite the lack of substance, this title is a runaway success but that's only due to great aircraft graphics, retail shelf domination, and a bludgeon-sized print advertising budget to hit everyone over the head with.
Ultimately, for all my acerbic sniveling, Microsoft gets the last laugh: They really do know what they are doing, just as Ray Kroc knew what he was doing when he started extruding hamburgers with paper-thin, meat-like patties and "shake"-like beverages. People are lining up to buy this sim. But all this heavy-duty shelf-space buying and advertising in print mags kinda begs the question tho---where were the ad banners on the websites? Apparently, the marketing bigwheels decided to put that money into those thought-control chips destined for simulation reviewers' necks.
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