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Ubisoft Hands Out Nexus 7 Tablets At a Game's Press Event
An anonymous reader writes "With Watch Dogs launching next month, Ubisoft is ramping up the promotion. That includes holding press events to show off the game to journalists, many of whom will end up reviewing Watch Dogs. One such event was held last week in Paris, and it has been revealed by attendees that Ubisoft decided to give everyone who turned up a Nexus 7 tablet. Why? That hasn't been explained yet, but in a statement on Twitter, Ubisoft said such gifts were 'not in line with their PR policies.' You can see how it would be viewed with skepticism; after all, these are the individuals who will give Watch Dogs a review score, which many gamers rely on to help them make a purchasing decision."
...it would have been more shocking if they hadn't been doling out swag bags to their press events.
This is news?
What the..Oof! Ow! Ouch! Merde! Zut Alors! Sonova..Oh, nice one.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The tablets are going film you, and put you on the net.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
yeah but how can you give people a "one time use" coupon that they can't post on to facefart or something like that?
agreed, it says to me that there is little perceived value in an android tab, so UBI probably thought it was like giving away coffee or something.
I predict a sucky game.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's intresting the people attending the press event had to sign a NDA and when it came out that press got a goodie bag with a tablet in there Ubisoft quickly says "its not sanctioned".
To me it looks like saving face because 20.000 dollar worth of tablets have to be vetted somewhere in the chain.
Also remember a couple of weeks ago when ubi got caught with doctoring images and they replied with "well those images where the vision of what we had not actual game play" but at the time they where saying it was game play.
Ubi shows it's shady business practices again.
One time use codes aren't uncommon. They could give out codes that are useable either as a Steam/Amazon/Play store/whatever discount code, or via a mail-in rebate type of mechanism. Either that, or post a reusable code and take the gamble that you'll pull in more customers with the lower price than you'll lose in per-purchase profit margin.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Give a discount on a digital download. Generate unique discount codes (random numbers) and allow each number to be used only once by keeping track of which numbers have been used.
Alternatively, accept the fact that the code will be shared and make it a small discount and/or only valid on launch day, to stimulate impulse buys. People will feel they got a good deal by outsmarting your system, while it was calculated from the start.
nm
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
The game will be bad, or is being completely oversold.
I'm trying to think of a case where this level of PR blitz/buying people off has ever resulted in a truly "good" game.
From TFS: "You can see how it would be viewed with skepticism; after all, these are the individuals who will give Watch Dogs a review score, which many gamers rely on to help them make a purchasing decision."
Come on, we're all adults here. We all know the industry gives perks to reviewers in exchange for favorable reviews. This is just more blatant than most.
While I love my Nexus 4 and especially the, now discontinued, Nexus 10, the 7 is a piece of junk, IMO. I run the same software on all of them (actually, less on the 7), and I have to charge it as often as the 4, which I use far more and is also receiving a cell signal.
The 10 is pretty sweet though. I can get almost two weeks, as compared to one/two days from the 7, with similar usage. I've wanted to throw the thing away myself. I don't blame Ubisoft.
This time, however, the demo concluded with a demonstration of a real-time iPad app that supports a kind of meta-game - much in the manner of Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass.
Here players were presented with a wireframe map of futuristic Chicago, drawn in a similar style to the one that used in the press conference demo. The map can be scrolled and zoomed, with pop-up boxes and icons providing real-time information about the game in progress.
"As we said, everything is connected - and we've extended that to mobile devices," said the Ubisoft demonstrator. "We have Chicago in the palm of your hand. Everything that you've seen in the game will be accessible, so different shops - pharmacies, gun shops - will also be available here. You can see everything."
I figured it out. All Ubisoft games are underbudgeted, glitchy DRM shitstorms so they gave them tablets to enter the rating immediately upon arriving since it was a foregone conclusion.
Here is more complete coverage (in french, since Ubisoft is a french company and the event was in Paris, but you will manage to translate)
In short, the Ubisoft person responsible for British PR decided to offer tablets to British journalists. No-brits had nothing, which suggests this is indeed an individual move
Giving away Nexus 7's seems hard to explain away. I mean, I tried to think of any reason why they might have wanted to give them all 7" Android tablets, like maybe an interesting way of distributing a multimedia press kit or something, but that could have just as easily been handled by $75 Chinese-made Android tablets.
That did make me think that that'd be pretty cool though; imagine buying a bunch of modestly-spec'd 7" Android tablets from China wholesale, and using them as giveaway items to distribute really dynamite multimedia presentations.
I actually picked up FOUR 7" Android 4.x tablets from DealExtreme for ~$35 each last year, during a half-price sale...and I doubt they'd let even such a sale as that rob them entirely of profits... So I imagine if you're a company buying tablets like that wholesale, you can get some pretty sweet deals, AND get them all custom-branded.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Woe betide any outfit which angers a games publisher. All that free shit, exclusives and the advertising will be pulled in an instant. The journo and the site will be blackballed and will have to wait outside the tent like everyone else.
Which is why people with an ounce of sense and self restraint wait for a game to be released and for a general concensus to form before making a purchase. Don't believe exclusive reviews, don't believe some bloggers pants wetting hyperbole after their all expenses paid jolly, don't trust a site which is festooned with ads for the game being reviewed. If a game is THAT GOOD, then it'll still be THAT GOOD a week or two down the line.