8 Ways Microsoft Saved The Xbox One With Savvy Marketing

Marketing objective: Rewarding brand loyalty.

Cast your mind back, young grasshopper, to a dark age when PlayStation owners got free games and Xboxers got… bugger all. Free games are a major selling point, and one that was a real stickler for gamers (particularly since PS3 owners didn’t even pay for online services). Then they started giving away games for Gold subscribers which were – how to put this politely – not very good.

Now, in terms of quality, the free games offering are about equal. But there’s some savvy marketing going on here too.

Weirdly, it’s all based around the principle of… theft.

Microsoft learnt this from their triple-A bedfellow EA, who released games subscription service EA Access on the console. EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson put it like this: ‘Human beings have an inherent need to steal…. We want is to make you feel like what you get [with EA Access] is worth more than the money you have in your pocket.’

Suddenly, shelling out £6 a month and getting four free games feels like serious value for money.