Although racer Blur garnered solid review scores, its sales figures didn't do the business and contributed to Activision's closure of developer Bizarre Creations in February.
Wilson used a bacon and cornflakes analogy to describe Blur's mix of weapons and real cars, noting that the game offered an odd combination which the marketing failed to reassure potential buyers about.
"You need to reduce people's fear of buying your product," Wilson said, according to Edge. "Fear is a bigger driver for consumers than desire. They're not going to buy something they haven't tried before, because it might be crap.
"Licensing is a good way to go, but you have to be careful because licensing costs money," Wilson added. "You have to balance it. With Project Gotham Racing 3 we spent millions getting Ferrari but it worked. People saw that on the cover.
"But with Blur, the licensing maybe worked against us: real cars and weapons. Bacon with cornflakes."
Comments
28 comments so far...
gmcb007 on 25 Jul '11 said:
I enjoyed Blur, in fact I still play it round my mates regularly. I thought it was quite fresh although the power ups did make it feel like COD racer sometimes. The game wasn't rubbish, their trust in their publisher was.
morpheus2n on 25 Jul '11 said:
I really enjoyed this game was alot better than I expected and the online was good fun
KK-Headcharge78 on 25 Jul '11 said:
It's Activisions fault, it usually is.
G_R7 on 25 Jul '11 said:
It may have failed due to the fact that each shop only got about 2 copies of it in to sell.
Nod Nolan on 25 Jul '11 said:
I'm still enjoying it regularly.... its only second to Burnout Paradise in arcade racers on the 360.
ensabahnur on 25 Jul '11 said:
I'd put it down to a bad release date, going head to head with Split/Second was bad enough (as it was for Disney's game as well) but releasing in the following weeks of Red Dead Redemption can't have helped at all. Better advertising might have helped as i don't think the Mario ribbing ads done them any favours.
I enjoyed the game more than Split/Second and used to play it every couple of nights with my mates on Live but that soon dried up and the majority of them have traded it now.
But hey, if we can blame Activision i'm all for it.
EvilDog77 on 25 Jul '11 said:
I bought it and to be honest I felt a bit ripped off. Not because it's s**t. It's a really good game. The trouble for me is I bought the PS3 version and I can never get a connection to the multiplayer servers.
This game is still widely available and noone bothers to mention the fact that the multiplayer element is nigh on useless.
a3HeadedMonkey on 25 Jul '11 said:
I really enjoyed the multiplayer beta, but tbh, it was probably a little bit too generous in the amount it gave you & how long it ran for. By the time the game came out, I'd pretty much had my fill of it & wasn't prepared to drop £40 on a game I felt like I'd already finished.
sakaspuds on 25 Jul '11 said:
i didnt buy the full game because i had enough of the game after playing the demo/beta, it was a very good game
Jensonjet on 25 Jul '11 said:
"They're not going to buy something they haven't tried before, because it might be crap"
Which is why a demo is so important.
I don't know if this game had a demo, I'll assume it did and people got a chance to try it. I don't think the game's poor sales can be blamed on marketing and advertising. The racing market is clearly very competitive, with several long running brands, and a whole variety of race disciplines available. Trying to break through with a new franchise and a slightly different take on racing was always going to be risky.
I would have thought the popularity or lack of for Wipeout would have acted as a barometer of how popular Blur might have been. Cars with guns sounds like a game for a younger audience, and that in itself must have guaranteed fewer sales than a typical race game based on reality or a previous tried and tested genre.
I don't think anyone's denying the difficulty in making a hit game. But to blame others when the basic concept is far more likely to have been the cause for disappointing sales is pretty weak. There's nothing wrong with admitting failure. Sometimes gamers don't want something too different, but I'm sure everyone appreciated that Blur tried something a little different.
BLARRG on 25 Jul '11 said:
i cant believe 800000 copies is considered a failure nowadays
DAEDALUS79 on 25 Jul '11 said:
I cant believe bacon and cornflakes is considered wrong, sounds marvelous!
Laughlyn on 25 Jul '11 said:
BLUR is an amazing game! Its simply a mature mario kart. personally i dont think anyone cared you had real cars using fantasy weapons, game just came out wrong time and didnt get attention it deserved. Bunch of me n my mates still play it least 3-4 times a week and still have great fun on it as well as the competetive racing side, in fact, thanks to it being so cheap now 6 more friends have been and bought it from shopto over past month or so.
Very_Silver_Ownz on 25 Jul '11 said:
I think the problem was the adverts not that they didn't advertise but they advertised it wrong.
In the advert they were saying how lame Mario Kart is and how Blur is for grown ups but has the power ups from Mario Kart ???
It actually made Mario Kart look good but the advert made Blur look boring as hell.
And what has power ups got to do with Blur ? Blur wasn't a good name just made it sound dull.
Megatrons_Fury on 25 Jul '11 said:
BLUR and even SPLIT SECOND were fine, nothing wrong with either unfortunately BLUR was released at a terrible time of they year, nothing sells in late spring / summer. I remember not being able to give that away in my shop even when it was cheap and the game even had a good demo great POS from the distributer and a tv ad that seemed to be on every ad break on telly.
Add to that that the days of car games being the primary genre are well and truly over, the first person shooter rules supreme now, one could argue that until the COD series become unfashionable no new game or other genre stands a realistic chance, like WOW on the pc it has provided a few million gamers with huge fun but kinda ruined the industry in a lot of ways.
Every new release gets rated against these 2 franchises if not by reviewers by the game buying public themselves, also add in the fact that for some unknown reason most folk especially on this site are not happy with what they have now, they want next years releases on a console thats not even out yet etc makes me wonder how anything sells.
Maybe a brand new Burnout could do well right now but the fact that Need for speed struglges even at xmas shows that something is definately wrong right now.
Until the balance of gaming swings back onto the single player experience over multiplayer then things just wont change, i promise you it will probably get worse, expect your games collection to feature more sequels year in year out as developers and publishers stick with what worked rather than trying to introduce something new or different.
The film industry has totally fallen into this trap, everything now seems to be a re-working of something old, my proof being that its become so bad that they are re-making Total Recall with colin Farell as lead, seriously if thats not something to make you cry, your a robot.
ensabahnur on 25 Jul '11 said:
Aye it was a pretty poor idea until i heard Bryan Cranston was appearing as Cohaagen and there will be a cat fight between Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale. Meeoww!!
In all seriousness though if they can make a decent thriller out of it with a decent storyline then it may well surpass Arnie's all action film which to be honest hasn't really stood the test of time just like many of his other films (it was on TV last week and half of its just laughable now). Obviously not Terminator though as that film will always be classic.
Ali_ on 25 Jul '11 said:
I would urge anyone with the slightest interest in arcade racing games to pick up Blur before the copies dry up. There's a boxout on this page showing HMV have it for £12 new. It's worth every single penny, and more.
Headsrinker on 25 Jul '11 said:
"Supersonic"
"Live Forever"
"Cigarettes & Alcohol"
"Roll with It"
"Wonderwall"
Do i need to go on??
gmcb007 on 25 Jul '11 said:
At first I was confused but then I realised. Well done
rivariad on 25 Jul '11 said:
gotta add "the death of you and me"
FASELI on 25 Jul '11 said:
Well I can only imagine that Megatron's Fury did not cry at the news of the Total Recall remake, unless he is specifically the fury and not Megatron and his fury.
Anyway the thing that hurt this game the most in the UK was Activision having a fallout with Game/Gamestation, they sell about 40% of all new release in this country. Which means you don't get it into the coveted Game chart and you also carry a price of £44.99-49.99, p**s off Game and this is what happens to you. The UK is a very important market for racing games, get it right and you can have your sequel green lit on UK sales figures alone, get it wrong...well we all know what happened to Bizarre. This disagreement also effected sales of Transformers: WFC, which is most sad indeed because I am prepared to give my right arm for a sequel, I am not prepared however to part with my still sealed, never opened, tape still in tact 1984 Optimus Prime!
Till all are one!
...Or until till someone gets the Transformers license of Acitivison.
liveswired on 25 Jul '11 said:
Marketing definitely didn't help - BUT if a game is really different it needs to be excellent to merit a purchase.
I just found the idea of driving realistic cars Mario Kart style with 'mixed' reviews a definite no buy.
mrlister on 25 Jul '11 said:
Blur was an excellent Mario Kart clone, and should have been marketed as such. It had a very cool presentation, but I think it should have been a bit more fun-looking, like SSX. As it was it looked kind of dark and serious, yet played like a colourful cartoon racer. I guess I know what he means about bacon and cornflakes.
Split Second was also good, but the problem there was that once you knew the tracks it all became very routine. It should have been harder to get the big track-changers, so you saw them less frequently, and there definitely should have been a slight random element to it, such as the placement of weak explosives, or procedural damage like in Red Faction Armageddon or even Flatout. The handling in that game was quite lovely.
Cryotek on 26 Jul '11 said:
Uh the problem was that it was released on the same day as Split/Second. Nobody's going to buy two combat racers on day 1, and both excellent games bombed because their publishers were morons.
Blur is probably my favorite racing game EVER. Nevermind that it supports split-screen local multiplayer on PC, which looks gorgeous at native 1080p+.
verynaughtyboy on 26 Jul '11 said:
I was actually put off this game when I read about the concept, real-world racing cars and Mario Kart style weapons, and even the pedigree of Bizarre Creations was not enough to sway me.
Then I read some really positive comments from gamers and found a new copy for £10. I think it's a great game and ultimately it's fallen foul of that great paradox that sometimes great games do net sell enough copies!
Very sad.
Steakface on 5 Aug '11 said:
Really bad timing for this game's release. There was a big buzz going on with SHIFT, Split/Second was released the same day if I'm not mistaken, and GT was on the horizon. That's just too many racers, and Blur got pushed into the background. The publisher being clueless and terrible marketing had a lot to do with it as well. Plus, no PC demo: always a mistake.
It's pretty sad that this game was their last hurrah and it failed. I was honestly considering getting it at one point. I had finally decided to pick it up instead of the gimmicky Split/Second, but was just too distracted with SHIFT and Race On and eventually just forgot about it until reading this article.
Wish I would have done my part to support them, but it's too late now.
rbt2 on 5 Aug '11 said:
Dunno how Blur failed.
Park life was a f**king great song!
gmcb007 on 6 Aug '11 said:
Agree'd