For those that are hyper-venalating (self included) ...lets take this one to heart, shall we? I look forward to hearing more about the game during the months leading to release in magazines etc.

*side rant...

Here is my take on why they are holding back on showing us more...

Remember when Todd was showing off TES IV's radiant AI in 2006? ...it was not off screen camera phone footage. It was crisp and clean with commentary... available to the public! He showed us AI shooting targets in town to increase their marksmen skill... and a women using silence on her dog because it wouldn't stop barking. All the AI had a schedule to keep, made sure that they we're eating 3 squares a day, growing their own food. A Dev blog even talked about how a player could take all the food of the town and hide it in a room somewhere, and the town will go to the room for food

Then they dumbed down the radiant AI to do none of the aforementioned, because the un-governed AI's daily agenda would screw up the main quest in some way. If anybody could shed my light on that, thank you... but that's the most details I remember.

SO... Bethesda is playing it safe. They don't want to show you too much, then dissapoint you later when they have to remove features that broke the game. It's possible that they may take away stuff we have already seen! Wouldn't be surprised if the whole 'drop item, AI returns it to you / fights over it' thing was taken out... just sounds potentially buggy, but I have faith that if it is included it will work.

It's good practice to not release info/footage untill you are 99% sure what has been shown will work when the game goes gold

tl;dr....pointing out the obvious, I know. Be patient in any case!

My thoughts exactly. No more molyneux mistakes for them lol.

If their market strategy was really good, we wouldn't have as many angry fans as we do. I think there are several information pieces they have handled poorly in terms of marketing.

EDIT: On the other hand I agree the not making promises they can't keep strategy is a good one.

The angry fans are a drop in the bucket. Even the polls here which are a tiny subsection of the fanbase show that. For the huge fans they don't even need to advertise at all. The vast majority of the people that buy it won't have even seen the E3 videos and such. The bulk of their effective marketing will be the advertisemants on TV, in theaters, in random magazines, on non-gaming websites, etc.

Morrowind = 1.8 million console sales
Oblivion = 5 million console sales
Fallout 3 = 6 million console sales

While Rockstar's marketing fails, Bethesda's keeps getting better.

GTA4 = 17 million console sales
RedDeadRedemption = 8 million console sales
LA Noire = 3 million console sales

They need a new GTA already

Thank you for looking at this matter with a clear mind and diligence, Op :foodndrink:. It's about time that people start coming around...

Every one of those games is a smashing success. Many game companies would love their games to even hit one million. Other than that it's really not a fair comparison because two of your three Rockstar examples are new IPs which usually don't do as well as established series.

I was PO'd yesterday but after a good night's sleep I'm back to my old Bethesda loving self. Glad I refrained from posting an angry comment on Bethblog while I was out of my mind.

Red Dead Redemption isn't a new IP, Red Dead Revolver came before it.

That's pretty unfair. Although the games play similarly, the IPs are completely different. I guarantee if Red Dead Redemption was called "GTA: RDR" It would have sole 18 million or more.

Yes. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of any PR campaign is to boost sales figures.
I believe Skyrim will beat both Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Now if we're talking about other criteria, such as strict ethics, I wouldn't be so assertive.
But it's not like we're talking Crimes Against the Roleplying Humanity here though.

I'm just using each company's three last games.

Well I'm pretty sure Rockstar didn't even make LA Noire. That might have been team bondi or something. Also, GTA is a monster franchise. If they were to release GTA 5 right now, the sales would climb to 20 million.

Looking just at the sales figures of the next product has killed many a company. The next down the line should always be on one's mind. Which also means you have to keep in mind what expectations people will have for that one. You create those expectations both by what you include today and what you leave out. If you show something and then have to take it out this product generation, you bet people will expect that you get your act together until the next one. Got something that hit the spot on this generation and people will expect you one-up it in the next. Which is also why the interjection to the list of Rockstar games that all three were distinct IPs was very valid. They were different brands not profiting off each other. Oblivion profited from Morrowind's success and the earlier TES games, Fallout profited from Fallout 1 and 2.

Problem is that Bethesda has been playing it fast and loose with the inter-generation expectations already.

I don't think GTA 4 did as well as it's predecessors.

While it's certainly true that they could have problems (again) from showing things that then don't make it into the final game (again), I honestly don't think that's the issue.

I sincerely believe that their concern is not that showing footage would raise expectations beyond what they could then meet, but that showing footage would only manage to make it that much more clear that the game isn't even going to meet existing expectations. I don't think that this is marketing so much as it's damage control.

Pessimistic or not - unpopular or not - that's my sincere opinion.

They need a New San Andreas.. GTA4 was meh

I prefer the lack of media. Whenever games have trailer after trailer and video after video before release they usually end up with massive hype and dont come close to living up to it. Crysis 2 almost had a new trailer/video every week and the game didnt come close to living up to the hype. For those that dont know Crysis 2 had 28 official pre-release trailers/videos.

An entire community of players would love to disagree with you.

What you illustrated was two things:

• You don't understand the role of brands and franchises
  
• You don't understand the difference between sales and marketing

While ensuring sales is one role of marketing, it's not its role necessarily to generate maximum sales. It's the goal of marketing to ensure long-term profitability of the company. Sales support is one aspect of this. Another is to find out which niches the company can move into, which may very well mean to launch some test games to see if the company can establish some standing and reputation in that field. Ideally, if marketing does its job right, today's game will literally sell itself, because marketing did its job right yesterday, anticipating what today's game has to offer. What does it mean if GTA4 generated 17 million sales? It means that the company behind it has room to move, to try out new things and see how they turn out. That has nothing to do with failed marketing at all. Quite the contrary, it can be marketing done very right. It can mean that the company can try out three new IPs where others were only able to stick to an existing one. If one of those three new IPs turns into a cash cow, the fact that the other two did only perform modestly ceases to matter.

Truth is if they felt what happened to oblivion hurt them with a sufficent ammount of potentail future consumers it makes complete sense.I havent been on these forums that long and ive seen more than a couple quotes of that stuff used to say we cant belive any thing they say .I mean why are they not showing the pc version over the 360 because they want people to see what they are getting and say ya this is cool not hay it looked better in the demo.So truth in advertisemant is a priority.No company wants the label as a false advertiser it hurts sales which is the bottom line.

i would like to see them sell as good as fallout, but now seeing their strategy im kind of pissed with all this secrecy
i dont want to know how secret they will be with the next tes

Sweet. One question though: how likely are they to still be playing around with volatile features less than 4 months prior to release?

They are probably at least testing to make sure there are not conflicts in them in actual game play that would cause the need for something to be changed.