PlayStation is outspending Xbox in marketing according to Michael Flatt, Xbox’s marketing director in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle-East and Africa). While Flatt didn’t reveal exact data, he stated that Microsoft doesn’t support international Xbox marketing as much as the US, which makes sense considering that Sony heavily invests in marketing globally and not just America.
Michael Flatt told Marketing Week that Microsoft provides little funds for marketing outside of the US in territories and regions that could give Xbox a boost internationally. Instead, most of Xbox’s marketing is geared towards the US market whereas Sony, he admits, easily outspends Microsoft in other regions.
Flatt stated:
“From a funding point of view, we need to work really hard against our competition. [Sony] is blessed with marketing funds that we’re just not able to enjoy. We’re not blessed with huge media budgets, so we have to be quite scrappy really, and quite tenacious to fight for funds that would probably go somewhere else.”
Things might only get worse as Microsoft apparently plans to stop marketing Xbox consoles in Europe, Africa and the Middle-East entirely. It’s easy to sympathise with Flatt and Xbox’s global marketing teams as Microsoft has seemingly done little to push the console’s sales overseas – it’s evident that selling hardware probably isn’t Xbox’s priority at the moment, especially in most regions where the PS5 is outselling the Xbox Series X/S almost 5-to-1.
Microsoft already began promoting messages that players won’t actually need an Xbox console to enjoy its games. With the recent price hike for Xbox Game Pass, it seems like that’s the priority for Microsoft right now as opposed to pushing consoles.
On that note, even the marketing for its first-party games hasn’t been great. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, one of the biggest first-party releases of the year for Xbox, only really ramped up its marketing a week or two before launch earlier this year. Before that, it was radio silence on Microsoft’s part – players had to be reminded online that the game was even coming out. Comparatively, Sony spends quite a lot on the marketing of its first-party games, looking at God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as examples.
Source: Marketing Week