It is not a surprise that Sony is spending huge amount of money to make its marquee PS4-exclusive Uncharted 4 game a massive success. Right from television advertisements to out-of-home advertisements as well as partnerships and a strong PR campaign, there really seems to be no expense spared by the company to drive home the feeling that it is the biggest game of the year. In fact, the company has said that the communications blitz is “PlayStation’s largest ever” marketing campaign for a game.
While that may hold true for the entire world, the company’s operations in India paint a very different picture. Barely a week before the game hits the shelves, there’s still little to no hype surrounding its release. The closest that an enthusiast could see that remotely resembles marketing for the Uncharted 4 hitting the country, are the token status updates on the official PlayStation India Facebook page, and the odd standee, here or there, first sighted at local e-sports tournaments and then hardly anywhere else. It is a fact that gamers are present at such competitions, but at a venue dominated by PC games they’re usually too busy trying to make a mark in Dota 2 or Counter-Strike to even bother with console releases.
The radio like silence from Sony makes even less sense to enthusiasts, especially when one considers the history of uncharted games in India. The first game in the series, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune that was released in 2007 to little local fanfare and an INR 2,799 price point was considered a tad too high for the time. Nonetheless, good word of mouth and rave reviews ensured that it did well, with close to zero marketing. Maybe the company is banking on the same this time too, but there’s no guarantee that history shall repeat itself.