Why is Steam not marketed as much as Playstation, Microsoft, Nintendo and the likes?

[Hanzo The Rain]

I find it odd that the only thing you see about Steam out there is a gift card at petrol stations, that's it. You literally don't see Steam branding advertisement anywhere and even on the internet, they're not seen.

Why? Shouldn't Valve do more to out-compete and keep their rivals on check?

[ken87]

Dollars.

[Wolf Knight]

playstation, microsoft, and ninendo have consoles and that is what they are advertising. they are trying to get their console into your house. if their console is in your home, then you are more likely to buy a game that uses that console.

if you look at the games that are advertising, they advertise all the platforms the game is for.

[Cathulhu]

Why should they? Steam does fine with a concurrent user peak over 30+ million users ever day.
And it is still growing.

https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/

[ShelLuser]

Why bother though? They're already right in place when it counts. When people start talking about gaming on, say, a Minecraft server then chances are high that Steam gets mentioned. Because of course it is.

You really can't top any of that with more advertising. It'd be a waste of money.

[Hanzo The Rain]

Wolf Knight lähetti viestin:

playstation, microsoft, and ninendo have consoles and that is what they are advertising. they are trying to get their console into your house. if their console is in your home, then you are more likely to buy a game that uses that console.

if you look at the games that are advertising, they advertise all the platforms the game is for.

How do you explain Steam Deck? They should be outcompeting Switch since their power is equivalent to a PS4.

But they’re not in TV, billboards and front of major electronic stores. Why?

[Hanzo The Rain]

Cathulhu lähetti viestin:

Why should they? Steam does fine with a concurrent user peak over 30+ million users ever day.
And it is still growing.

https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/

You would expect a billion dollar company with a big playerbase to promote their ♥♥♥♥ to maximise $. Weird but ok

[DC-GS]

Buggy lähetti viestin:

How do you explain Steam Deck? They should be outcompeting Switch since their power is equivalent to a PS4.

But they’re not in TV, billboards and front of major electronic stores. Why?

The production is still too low for the demand. They wont sell more units with increased demand.

The Steam Deck is only sold on Steam in most countries. If the Deck hits retail stores, they could start advertise.

[retro_Ed]

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/steam-deck-hitting-retail-stores-in-japan-from-april-29th-south-korea-to-follow/

[Nx Machina]

Why does Valve need to advertise Steam when Timmy Sweeney does it for them.

[Brian9824]

Buggy lähetti viestin:

Wolf Knight lähetti viestin:

playstation, microsoft, and ninendo have consoles and that is what they are advertising. they are trying to get their console into your house. if their console is in your home, then you are more likely to buy a game that uses that console.

if you look at the games that are advertising, they advertise all the platforms the game is for.

How do you explain Steam Deck? They should be outcompeting Switch since their power is equivalent to a PS4.

But they’re not in TV, billboards and front of major electronic stores. Why?

They don't need to, they have enough users that word of mouth does it for them, and most PC games go thru them anyways. So every new PC game coming out is an advertisement for Steam. Steam itself is free, its the GAMES that make steam the money, and every game developer.

So all that advertisement for Starfield is also advertisement for Steam for instance.

[ReBoot]

Buggy lähetti viestin:

Cathulhu lähetti viestin:

Why should they? Steam does fine with a concurrent user peak over 30+ million users ever day.
And it is still growing.

https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/

You would expect a billion dollar company with a big playerbase to promote their ♥♥♥♥ to maximise $. Weird but ok

Why though? Exaxctly because it is a successful company with a huge player base, exactly because GabeN is rich AF (although nobody knows exactly how rich), why though? Steam is a massive success as-is.

Hell, if I was a rich-AF head honcho of a company that runs everdamn well, I would let it run as it's been running all those years. The fact that the company runs everdamn successful for years, means that what the company's been doing for years is good. Let run what runs well.

[Tito Shivan]

Wolf Knight lähetti viestin:

playstation, microsoft, and ninendo have consoles and that is what they are advertising. they are trying to get their console into your house.

Steam doesn't need you to go to a shop to buy their console to play their games.

Buggy lähetti viestin:

Why? Shouldn't Valve do more to out-compete and keep their rivals on check?

Their rivals don't market themselves as consoles do either.

[Crazy Tiger]

Buggy lähetti viestin:

Wolf Knight lähetti viestin:

playstation, microsoft, and ninendo have consoles and that is what they are advertising. they are trying to get their console into your house. if their console is in your home, then you are more likely to buy a game that uses that console.

if you look at the games that are advertising, they advertise all the platforms the game is for.

How do you explain Steam Deck? They should be outcompeting Switch since their power is equivalent to a PS4.

But they’re not in TV, billboards and front of major electronic stores. Why?

Most likely the target audience is Steam users, who'll know about the Deck through Steam anyway. Not unlike the Steam Controller and Valve Index.

You're assuming they want to compete with the Switch or would use the Deck to gain new users, but who says that's what Valve goes for? To me Valves hardware is mostly aimed to supplement/enhance the experience existing Steam users have.

[Haruspex]

Early last year, there was a Portal 2 Geico commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scNJdvpmPbQ

With the Steam Deck about to release at the time, some were speculating that this might be the beginning of a big marketing push to make people aware of Steam and the Steam Deck who otherwise wouldn't be.

I didn't happen though. Valve seems to let the PC gaming community do it's marketing for it via word of mouth. Personally, I think this does a great job of getting the word around among PC gamers, but your average Joe who barely understands that the PC is for more than just Facebook and Solitaire is often completely unaware that Steam exists. Meanwhile they probably have a console in their living room.

Part of me does want to see a big marketing push and watch Steam explode into mainstream popularity giving the other big 3 console guys a run for their money. The other part though dreads all these new and completely clueless users suddenly infecting Steam. We have plenty of clueless people already who have zero sense of personal responsibility on Steam. A big marketing push targeting at people who don't currently use Steam would mean a big influx of completely oblivious users who don't understand that their $300 Walmart laptop isn't really cut out to run new AAA releases at 4k. They will blame Steam, and it doesn't even matter that it's not Steam's fault they don't know what they're doing. If their user experience is bad, then it will reflect poorly on Steam as a whole.

Valve is doing a really good job making PC gaming more digestible for the brainless masses, but it's not quite on the level of console ease of use yet. They should probably hold off on any big marketing push until they can almost guarantee that any schmoe off the street can have a good experience PC gaming with Steam.

[_veleron]

Harusp3x lähetti viestin:

Part of me does want to see a big marketing push and watch Steam explode into mainstream popularity giving the other big 3 console guys a run for their money.

Yeah, good luck with that.
They've been struggling with their usual - quite impressive! - growth all these years with all sorts of server performance issues, so them 'exploding into mainstream' is all we need now