The Anthem Game: A Case Study in Misleading Marketing and Commercial Failure

Anthem was first announced in 2017 and is being developed by the studio BioWareIt was considered one of the most anticipated games at the time. The game was released in February 2019, and achieved commercial success thanks to a “huge marketing campaign.” Its impact quickly disappeared completely and evaporated completely within the first month of its release.

The game was a living example of service games that EA tried to basically adopt into its games and impose on players during that period. Anthem was promoted as a revolutionary game that offers a completely different experience to players. However, the game literally failed to deliver on these promises, suffering from technical issues and limited content duplication.

Of course, the game suffered from a large number of technical problems, such as malfunctions and problems that appeared in the game’s performance and graphics. These problems led to players being upset and a large number of them leaving it after a few hours of trying it.

Can you believe that the first presentation that appeared for the game was said to be just a CGI presentation that was designed only for promotion, and that there were no real ideas or projects that had actually begun until after seeing the positive audience reaction from the “imaginary” presentation, which is what some shocking reports talked about? Which shed light on the reasons for the game’s failure commercially, critically, and on several other levels.

A former manager who worked at Electronic Arts reported through his official account on the LinkedIn platform that the game Anthem sold five million copies during its entire presence on the platforms, a number that was considered less than the expectations of the publisher EA, and for this reason it was abandoned in the end, and with no map released. The path is clear to fix the game or try to improve it, the number of players decreased significantly and over time, the development team was laid off and any future projects for the game were canceled permanently.

New information was recently revealed through the LinkedIn profile of a senior global marketing manager who previously worked for EA, and was monitored through the user’s account. Timur222It was reported that Anthem shipped two million copies in its first week only, and then sold a total of five million copies in its lifespan, which is considered a huge number for a completely new game.

This matter once again highlights companies’ methods of marketing their projects and their use of CGI presentations, as happened with Cyberpunk 2077 after its launch, as well as the presentations of the first Watch Dogs game, and finally The Day Before, which we recently talked about.

In the end, the question remains: Are players still falling for misleading ads, or have reviews become a reliable source for accurate information about games?