Marketing a product your designing

[Volk]

Every time I send out a press release it always say "company name" wants to tell us about "product name" again. But goes on to say we havnt heard much about "product name" . I set release dates do videoes pics and text. Is this just always like that

[Bautz]

And in the end "not going to sell very well they should have marketed it more"

[Xposr]

You should try a small effort of marketing while the product is in the design phase. Also, I see a lot of Youtubers trying to cap out the development phase of early products, and they end up spending TOO MUCH time on a product. If you max out the development of a product, the programming and debugging of the product will take such a long time. You can make bank (money) with a "Mediocre" or even "Bad" product. Hope this helps.

[Hunterosity]

I tend to not look at what the "Software Times" says, I only look at my follower count for each product.

I've got 3 teams working on a product throughout the day (1 morning, afternoon and night). This allows me to estimate when my product will be ready for release, I outsource reviews and if I get a 9+ I set the release date for 2 months later, send out a press release, press build and activate the hype option.

The next month I continue the development, throw out another press release and press build, and the month after (the month before the release) I promote the game into beta and work out a few bugs.

And then I release the product, with quite a few followers. If I market my product a month earlier or something, I tend to start losing followers right before release, so this works for me. You're gonna have to try and fiddle around with the dates to find out what works for you.

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Hunterosity || Moun10:

I tend to not look at what the "Software Times" says, I only look at my follower count for each product.

I've got 3 teams working on a product throughout the day (1 morning, afternoon and night). This allows me to estimate when my product will be ready for release, I outsource reviews and if I get a 9+ I set the release date for 2 months later, send out a press release, press build and activate the hype option.

The next month I continue the development, throw out another press release and press build, and the month after (the month before the release) I promote the game into beta and work out a few bugs.

And then I release the product, with quite a few followers. If I market my product a month earlier or something, I tend to start losing followers right before release, so this works for me. You're gonna have to try and fiddle around with the dates to find out what works for you.

Isn't there a quality penalty when different teams work on a single product? Maybe I'm just crazy.

[Hunterosity]

Originally posted by Stealth:

Originally posted by Hunterosity || Moun10:

I tend to not look at what the "Software Times" says, I only look at my follower count for each product.

I've got 3 teams working on a product throughout the day (1 morning, afternoon and night). This allows me to estimate when my product will be ready for release, I outsource reviews and if I get a 9+ I set the release date for 2 months later, send out a press release, press build and activate the hype option.

The next month I continue the development, throw out another press release and press build, and the month after (the month before the release) I promote the game into beta and work out a few bugs.

And then I release the product, with quite a few followers. If I market my product a month earlier or something, I tend to start losing followers right before release, so this works for me. You're gonna have to try and fiddle around with the dates to find out what works for you.

Isn't there a quality penalty when different teams work on a single product? Maybe I'm just crazy.

So far I haven't expected anything. If you, say, need 5 developers and 2 artists, then have 3 teams with each 5 developers and 2 artists (and perhaps a leader for each team). Have each team work on the product during different time and you should be fine. I've had plenty of great and a couple of outstanding products :P

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Hunterosity || Moun10:

Originally posted by Stealth:

Isn't there a quality penalty when different teams work on a single product? Maybe I'm just crazy.

So far I haven't expected anything. If you, say, need 5 developers and 2 artists, then have 3 teams with each 5 developers and 2 artists (and perhaps a leader for each team). Have each team work on the product during different time and you should be fine. I've had plenty of great and a couple of outstanding products :P

Ok, cause right now I got 3 programming teams working on 3 different things, in 8 hours shifts starting at 3 different times at any given time and things get hectic real quick since I manage everything manually! But if I can get one thing done at a time but more quickly, it will be more manageable. I'm gonna try it your way, seems less hectic with the same end result!

[Hunterosity]

Originally posted by Stealth:

Originally posted by Hunterosity || Moun10:

-snip-

-snip-!

FYI: I'm using the software extention mod. I've got 4 products and 15 teams (my character is 1 team though). Below, up to the --- line, is what I'm currently managing, with ease.

Right now it's June of 1989 and I've got over 7 billion. Every month I spend 8m on my employees and 355k on my staff (receptionists, maintenance, IT, cleaning etc).

I have 3 teams for each product. The day team starts at 8am and works until 4pm, the "night" team starts at 5pm and works until 1am the next day, and the "extra" team starts at 1am and works until 9am.

I have 3 design teams, they design each product I create.
I have 1 bios team, because it's not worth 3 otherwise I'd be pumping out a new bios product every 3 months.
I have 2 game teams, they work as day and night shifts, on one game at a time. Once I finish one game, they start developing the next game.
I have 3 processor teams, because processors take a long ass time to develop (nearly a year).
I have 1 research team which doubles as my support team.
I have 4 marketing teams, 2 are day and 2 are night shifts, they work in different buildings though.

Every year, in January, I start designing my bios, processor and the first game. It takes me roughly 2 months to design all of them. I release my bios and processor at the end of each year to start the design on a sequel the year after. I release 1 game halfway into the year and another one at the start of the next. All of my products are either great or outstanding, depending on the amount of time I have.

All of my teams have a couple guys more than recommended, so if the development of a game suggests 5 programmers and 2 artists, I'll have 7 programmers and 3 artists working on the game.

It takes time to set up but once it's working, it's a goldmine.

---

So, what I recommend, given that you've saved up like 5 million, is for you to start with 1 design team and 3 program teams to work on 1 product and you'll be able to release them within a year (given that all your staff are properly trained in their fields).

Step 1: make a couple of million by doing what I described above, then proceed to step 2.

Step 2: pick another thing you want to develop and make money on. Hire 3 teams for that product, each working in different shifts.

Step 3: use outsourced reviews and develop your products to a score of 8+. Whilst you're developing, hire a marketing team of 20 people or so.

Step 4: once you get the proper score, promote your product and start fixing bugs.

Step 5: As soon as you promote your product, you'll want to set a release date 2 months later. If you're using days, 2 months + a couple of days, you'll want to be on the high side. Don't go past 3 months. Send out a press release, press build, and activate hype.

Step 6: upon the release month (or the first day of the release month), release your product, set an appropriate amount of money as the marketing budget, and get the appropriate amount of units in stock.

Step 7: ????

Step 8: profit.

Step 9: go to step 2.

I recommend you don't go past 5 products without more design teams.

[Stealth]

Ok thanks :)