Ourcolony.net

Just recently an image of a cgi car was found (PGR3). Another ARG (alternate reality game) is up and going again enjoy. Im not good enough for this type of stuf fmyself so I' ll just watch and see what othe rppl find.

I went and checked it out and could do absolutely nothing there so I left. It confused the hell outta me.

Ya you need to go to som forums like Teamxbox' s or X-Scenes and join one of the forum teams. There you can get a password to enter further into the site and so on and so on. Apparently theres a big thing going on where points are used and stuff. Like I said ima just watch and see what the teams discover.

BTW heres the car image form TeamXbox that was recently found:

Yeah, it didn' t really surprise me at all to see that Microsoft is going to use this marketing strategy with their upcoming console. The ilovebees drew an awful lot of attention, and most importantly...it did it very cheaply. I' d be more surpised to NOT see more and more companies doing this. It' s like how the boxers now sometimes sell their backs so a casino can get some good publicity.

do you find that it only draws in the hardcore fans anyways though?? I mean, sure halo lovers loved the whol bees thing, but I' m not sure the average joe trying to decide which console to get next will look at this and say, " ok, time to frustrate myself for hours just to figure out what this site is" . I think it' s more for the x-box fans already.

It appeals mainly to the Xbox fan, sure. Then again it reaches an even greater number of fans by doing this in combination with whatever they are planning to air on MTV. The thing is you are not adding it the friends calling their other gaming friends that might now follow Xbox all that well and letting them know about the website...word of mouth if you will. This is something that people are talking about, which is evident by this being a topic on the major forums I frequent. It' s so inexpensive there really shouldn' t be a reason why a company would NOT do this these days.

I agree the word of mouth is good, and it' s good cheap advertising, I just think that unless you' re a fan, when you get to the page you' ll spend 3 minutes going " what the hell" and then realize how easy it is to find porn on the internet instead. The MTV thing however is definetly a smart move. Seriously if companies want to appeal to gamers, they should all follow microsofts example, and show the goods to the customers first, not the executives. At least give it the appearance you' re doing that anyways, I' m sure there' ll be plenty of closed doors demos around the same time to whichever execs need them.

ORIGINAL: mxpx182
do you find that it only draws in the hardcore fans anyways though??

Yes, but the thing is that the hardcore fans are the OPINION FORMERS and the EARLY ADOPTERS. Most casual gamers (or whatever you want to call the " rest" of the market i.e. 90% of it) make their game buying decisions based on word-of-mouth, a form of marketing that most marketers agree is the most powerful.

Therefore the remaining 10%, the hardcore, are arguably the most important audience to win over initially. That audience exists almost exclusively ONLINE these days, which is why OURCOLONY.NET and ONLINE ADVERTISING ON SITES LIKE KIKIZO (!) are more effective that print or TV advertising for this audience on a per-user basis these days.

Of course, targeting the casual/mainstream " directly" is also important which is why I commend Microsoft on the MTV strategy at the same time as saying all this. Especially when I know that I get to see the whole Xbox 360 unveiling some time before the MTV show goes on air in the US... ;-)

and ONLINE ADVERTISING ON SITES LIKE KIKIZO (!)

Love the plug there Adam!!!! Although I guess plugging your own site on your own forums isn' t really a plug. and as for this:

Especially when I know that I get to see the whole Xbox 360 unveiling some time before the MTV show goes on air in the US

I knew it!!! YOu lucky bastard, you lucky lucky bastard. (to quote my favorite demented chained up prisoner from the life of brian)

With all the points and stuff, does anyone know if the winning team will get somthign in the end? I mean I know iut wouldnt be anything huge since some forums have thousands of users so you cant really dish out a huge prize per person. Just curious.

You win a Xbox 360 SDK...
... or a copy of a poor-selling game. Your pick.

Especially when I know that I get to see the whole Xbox 360 unveiling some time before the MTV show goes on air in the US... ;-)

And how will WE benefit from this?

And how will WE benefit from this?

He' ll post pictures of lint picked directly from an actual 360 unit! ;)

ORIGINAL: Joe Redifer

Especially when I know that I get to see the whole Xbox 360 unveiling some time before the MTV show goes on air in the US... ;-)

And how will WE benefit from this?

Most game media will get an advanced preview if all goes to plan. Some magazines have already seen it just last week. Online waits longer because we have shorter lead time. But we will all be NDA' d to our eyeballs. The purpose is that we get to run our own coverage live quickly, presumably as soon as the MTV programme finishes airing in the States. Don' t know exact details yet. But I am excited. :)

The purpose is that we get to run our own coverage live quickly, presumably as soon as the MTV programme finishes airing in the States. Don' t know exact details yet. But I am excited. :)

I know I' ll be waiting for those articles, videos, and pics!!!

Adam, is your staff ready for the onslaught of information they will need to post?

Why not?! (just kidding)

Keep us posted...please!

Adam, is your staff ready for the onslaught of information they will need to post?

We' ve put together a pretty solid training camp for E3 this year and have been consistently working out 5 days a week doing plenty of Push ups, Sit-ups, weight-lifting, running, and no holds barred grappling.

The week before the show we get to wind down a bit from all the training and get bathed by some Geisha girls!

I hope your plane doesn' t run out of gas on the way to luxurious Los Angeles.

I still don' t understand why they don' t hold the E3 in Denver. It kicks LA' s ass. We have fewer STD' s floating around, and plenty of Japanese producer-friendly places to go.

I still don' t understand why they don' t hold the E3 in Denver. It kicks LA' s ass. We have fewer STD' s floating around, and plenty of Japanese producer-friendly places to go.

Probably for the same reason they won' t hold one on the East coast EVAR again - most game developers/publishers on these shores are located on the West coast so when the show was brought over to the East coast that one time, they all bytched, cried, whined, and moaned about having to travel..

You never really hear Japanese or European developers/publishers/correspondents bytching about traveling such a long ways - 10-14 hours - overseas to get to E3, but yet the ones from the U.S. couldn' t handle maybe 4 - 5 hours of traveling, lol..

Supposedly THIS is a shot of the console itself... or at least part of it. It may have the option of standing up or laying down like the PS2. Looks like Sony implemented the aesthetics of the Mac G5 and the PS2 into one unit. It is hilarious how MS is using Macs to develop the games on, since the Xbox360 is basically a Mac. Everyone knows that Microsoft can' t come up with their own ideas that work. Look at Windows... it' s a horrible mess of an operating system. It sucks!