Mercenaries Makes a Killing in January

February 23, 2005 | By: James Brightman

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For a publisher whose sales largely come from Star Wars-based titles, LucasArts picked the perfect time to test the waters with a new IP. "Launching in January allowed our new IP to get out of a crowded market and into the sunshine," said John Geoghegan, VP of Marketing, LucasArts. The strategy worked as Mercenaries went on to sell more than 383,000 copies in only a few weeks.

Any publisher will tell you that successfully launching a new IP in today's market isn't easy, but when you're as much of a license-bound publisher as LucasArts is, it can become nearly impossible. Remember Wrath Unleashed, Armed and Dangerous, or RTX Red Rock? Neither did we. Before Mercenaries was released last month, those titles represented nearly all of LucasArts' titles that strayed from the Star Wars license.

Released January 10, the Pandemic-developed Mercenaries wound up selling 182,000 copies on the PS2 and 201,000 on the Xbox, based on NPD numbers. Combining the two SKUs makes it the best selling game of the month, surpassing Capcom's Resident Evil 4. Released last week in Europe, it and KOTOR II gave LucasArts a 1-2 punch for the top spots in the U.K.

Timing is Everything
LucasArts always saw Mercenaries as a potentially huge seller, but that doesn't automatically translate into a holiday release being the best decision. With Q4 as packed as it is, Mercenaries' war theme and lack of name recognition wouldn't have captured the attention of much of anyone. The same campaign running just a month later allowed them to have the space largely to themselves.

"Choosing to launch Mercenaries in early January was perhaps the most important marketing decision we made for the title. Q4 is a train wreck in terms of too many titles chasing a finite amount of consumer spending. Launching in January allowed our new IP to get out of a crowded market and into the sunshine where it stood a chance of succeeding the way we'd hoped," LucasArts' Vice President of Marketing John Geoghegan told GameDAILY BIZ.

And succeed it did. While Geoghegan reaffirmed that the title did indeed meet expectations, he also pointed out that LucasArts is always striving for greater success with every individual release. "Mercenaries has certainly lived up to our commercial expectations. Having said that, LucasArts is exceedingly ambitious where our titles are concerned. We're always asking ourselves what can, or should we, be doing to make a LucasArts title an even bigger success," he said.

Memorable Marketing Message
Although Geoghegan pointed to the release date shuffle as the biggest marketing decision leading to the game's success, a TV campaign encouraging gamers to "blow the living crap" out of pretty much everything certainly created one memorable message. It wasn't entirely smooth sailing though, and LucasArts learned a lesson about TV double standards along the way.

"[Our Biggest challenge was] getting clearance from the networks to use the word 'crap' in our advertising," Geoghegan said. "You can say it on their programming, just not in the commercials that run on those programs. Go figure."

The simplicity of the message itself certainly made the TV spot more memorable than others. "Our advertising message was simple: you can have a ton of fun being a mercenary in a free form environment running around blowing stuff up," Geoghegan explained.

A Sign of Further Diversification?
LucasArts has had a very successful run this console generation, with Battlefront, Rogue Squadron II, KOTOR I & II among others becoming big hits, but relying so heavily on one property, even one as sustainable as Star Wars has proven to be, is not a healthy model.

Geoghegan hopes the success of Mercenaries can help set off a string of successful new IPs for the publisher, and bring back some of that Lucas-like creativity. "LucasArts believes that in the future, one measure of a successful, creatively-driven publisher will be its ability to launch a new IP and have it do well in the marketplace. Mercenaries was just the first step in our putting the 'Lucas' back in LucasArts," he said.