Why Microsoft's marketing is cynical, cheap - and brilliant

Microsoft is, increasingly, an awful lot like Apple when it comes to marketing.

A couple of years ago Redmond seemed comfortable to sit in its nerdy niche but, ever since the arrival of advertising guru Steve Ballmer as CEO, the firm has paid plenty of attention – and spent plenty of money – on revamping its image.

It’s arguable that only the crucial Windows group has more of a marketing focus than the Xbox division but, whereas adverts for the new OS have concentrated on being open and honest, Microsoft’s gaming efforts seem to focus on pulling the wool over customer’s eyes – especially when it comes to so-called “exclusive” titles.

Take Left 4 Dead 2, for instance. One of this Winter’s blockbuster releases, it’s developed by PC gaming icons Valve – as was the first after the studio was bought mid-way through the game’s creation – and is a co-operative FPS that’s best played on the PC.

Except the average gamer might not know that: every TV advert shows the game’s frenetic action before cutting to an Xbox 360 ident that, to the average Modern Warfare 2 and FIFA-playing console fan, makes the game appear as an exclusive.

Of course, Microsoft avoids legal issues by never using the “E” word, but it’s not needed – the Xbox 360 branding at the end of the advert will, I’m sure, make enough gamers assume that the game is only available on Microsoft’s platform.

It’s not only Left 4 Dead 2 that has fallen prey to Microsoft’s sneaky tactics. Most of the Rock Band series has been adorned with the branding despite it being available for PlayStation 3 simultaneously, and a new advert shows all manner of music games – including Guitar Hero 5 and DJ Hero – being played on a 360, with voice of “real” music Jo Whiley providing a suitable voiceover. Zane Lowe has done the same sort of thing in the past, too.

This strategy – which presents many of the world’s most alluring games as exclusive titles, even if they’re not – is arrogant, smug and misleading. Very few tech companies, with the exception of the cult-like Apple, have been able to get away with something along these lines.

Perhaps I’m feeling wounded as an unashamed Sony fan: after all, it only really advertises real exclusives rather than pretending that multi-format releases are only available on one platform.

Unfortunately for Sony, it seems to be working. Reports from the launch of Modern Warfare 2 suggested that Xbox 360 copies were flying off the shelves in comparison to the PlayStation 3 version, even if the gap between the two consoles is closing: Activision reported that 360 sales outnumbered PS3 sales two to one, even though PS3 sales have surged over the past few months.

And, perhaps, Microsoft should be applauded for its aggressive advertising. Sony has its own endorsements – many of which, including the Champions League and WRC – it’s stood by for years, but it just doesn’t promote its console as aggressively as Microsoft does in the mainstream, with adverts touting many of the same services, such as movie streaming and media capabilities, that the PS3 offers for free.

With only a handful of exclusive games between platforms and most big titles appearing on both machines, I’d wager that Microsoft’s early lead of the PS3 was the result of an earlier launch and plenty of adverts rather than it being borne out of a genuinely superior machine.

After all, thanks to Microsoft’s sneaky marketing, thousands of people are fooled in thinking that certain games are only available on a console that’s noisy, ugly and far more expensive, when it comes to total cost of ownership, than its main competitor.

There's no doubt that Microsoft's aggressive and effective marketing strategy should be applauded. It’s just a shame that the battle between the world’s two best consoles might be won by whoever is willing to stump up the biggest advertising budget.

Little Squares of History

I've been reading a book by Jane's Addiction and ex-RHCP guitarist, Dave Navarro and, well, it's a little odd.

Titled 'Don't Try This At Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro', the book follows him, month by month, as he allows unmetered access to his life at a time when he was conducting a unique, artistic experiment. In some down-time between bands, he'd bought an antique phone-booth and made everyone - yes, everyone, including various prostitutes, drug dealers and west-coast layabouts - who entered his house to submit a strip of photos.

The pictures are interspersed in pages of the book, woven around odd little stories and everyday explaination of Navarro's chaotic life: he yo-yo's between rampant and dangerous drug use - at one point, while high, he shoots a hole in the floor with his shotgun - and concerted attempts to get clean without using the traditional routes of rehab or a talented PR person.

Some of this takes place in straight narrative, with the action being fed to us by Neil, the book's co-author. Some more is presented in scripts, written by Navarro, detailing conversations he's had. Others are abstract little pages, snippets from his life.

Even though it gets incredibly far-fetched - on a normal day, Chad Smith comes over and bums around the house in a drugged-up stupor for an entire night before leaving at daybreak - you never doubt that this happened. As well as using the photo booth to document little squares of history, Navarro taped recorders to the undersides of tables and chairs, and secreted cameras in fake clocks and ornaments. None of the visual material that emerged from those recordings is present in the book - he often alludes to an accompanying website which is always being updated. I can only assume that it's now offline. Some of the aural material would have formed the basis of the conversations in the book, certainly. Some of the stuff that isn't in the tome must be dynamite.

I'm nearing the end now, and it's been an odd journey: on one hand, Navarro is constantly unsure of himself and his future: one minute he's optomistic about getting clean and settling down with on/off girlfriend Adria, and the next he's sure that a drugged-up death is but around the corner. Then again, I couldn't help but notice that I had a fair few pages to go, and Navarro seemed to have attacked the documentation project with such a tenacity that you don't believe that something as insignificant as an overdose will stop him completing his annual of oddities.

And he's still alive today, which is something of a clue.

But, rather than giving away the (somewhat inevitable) ending, it fascinates and throws up more questions in equal measure: how on earth did someone survive this and, more importantly, how did Navarro get through it, with the state of mind he had at the time? Or, perhaps, his neurotic behaviour helped. Answers to these questions are, like the man himself for much of the book, something of a mystery.

But it's good to know that it's been unravelled slightly, at least. Maybe I'll stick a webcam on my desk and record everything as a modest tribute. But I daresay that talking about printer reviews, benchmark tests and football gossip won't be nearly as exciting as a constant parade of musicians, movie stars, freaks and dealers.

I did it! I DID IT!

I beat Freebird on Hard mode in Guitar Hero 2.

Three days it took me.

WOO!

Note to Self: Don't do that again.

'We're having a movie night!' said Dave, a couple of evenings ago. He was having some friends round and they were watching Gay Films - one called Camp, and another called Another Gay Movie. Me and Frances were invited, he said, and there would be plenty of alcohol and snacks. So I decided to join them.

Well, Camp, from what I can remember, is a great film. Very funny! And everyone laughed. I just can't remember much of it, because by then i'd finished off half a bottle of Bacardi I had lying around, had a glass of rosé - my first ever - and Rich had come round and suggested we go to the pub. So, we went to The Castle, our local. It was a Friday night, and so pretty busy. I've discovered that I, with the addition of either Bacardi or wine, or both, become the leeriest man in Aberystwyth. I was too shy to actually talk to anybody female, but I deemed everyone in the pub and everyone who walked through the door a potential candidate for evaluation. Me and Rich also talked about a lot of shit, and we had a deep conversation about hair styling products and which is the best out of gum, paste, and wax. Somebody save me.

I had four Jack Daniel's. Or that could be five, I don't entirely remember. When I got back, the second film was half - way through, but nobody was paying it that much attention, because of the amount of Pringles and sweets being passed around the room and the oodles of gossip and insults being slung. 'Want some vodka, Mike?' Dave asked as I stumbled back into the room.

'Yes! Yes I do!'

And so he offered me a can of coke to go with it. I hasten to add, at this point, that if i'm going to technically classify my next drink, it should be called Coke with Vodka, rather than the more traditional, and usual, classification. I drunk that, ate some more pringles. We then had some shots of Nordic Berry vodka, that's blue and very nice, then I had a glass of squash with more vodka in. We decided that drawing would be a good idea, and I think I drew a penis. And some boobies. I'm sure the Tate Modern would be interested.

The night drew to a close then: Dave's friend got upset, and they all went home, and everyone (even the upset friend) agreed it was a great night. Dave also let me have his big mug that was very full of more Coke and Vodka, which I drunk as I went on the computer. Sometime around here I decided that to stay up all night playing Burnout and chatting on MSN would be a good plan, and so that's exactly what I did.

Burnout is fantastic. It's a racing game that's stupidly, eye-bleedingly quick, and rewards you for skillfull driving that pushes you to the very startling edge of your abilities, but will punish you the second you overstep the boundary and disintegrate your multi-million pound supercar between a bus and a 18-wheel lorry. Sometimes it even rewards driving into cars and creating havoc. I found that i'm much better at the game when i'm very, very drunk, unusually.

By 6am, an hour that I hadn't seen for literally months, it was getting light. It was amazing how quickly it did get light. By half six, it was daylight, but Aberystwyth still slept. By 10am, when I went for a shower, it was obvious that I was still hammered. I barely noticed when I collided with a doorframe on the way, but I did notice the bruise later. By eleven, my hangover had kicked in, together with the crippling tiredness after not sleeping. I was reading magazines and not registering a word, and having to squint through one eye to see what people were typing on the computer. I napped, for about half an hour.

By now, the realisation had come to me: I was, apparently, both drunk and hungover at the same time. My body was utterly depleted from energy due to lack of sleep, and the fact that I hadn't eaten a hot meal since being at home the previous weekend. My hands were shaking, I felt cold, and my eyes were coated with stinging, hot resistance to my attempts to keep them open. I knew there was football on, and I phoned Chris, who was upstairs, to see if he wanted to go watch, so I could gulp down coke and eat food and try and recoup as much energy as possible. When he came into the room to collect me, he just burst out laughing at my slumped-over self.

The food revived me. Sugar seeped into every vein, and I felt marginally better. I still, however, was pretty out of it. I have pretty standard, pretty hazy memories for the drunk portion of the.. I can't really say night because it went on longer than that.. the episode . I remember wobbling my way out of the flat and struggling down the snooker hall like a paraplegic who had a wheelchair with one wheel removed. I slumped to eat my food, barely aware of the football, reading the weekend papers but not taking anything in. I thought, in my drunken stupidity, that by harnessing the powers of alcohol and the semi-conscious state of sleep deprivity, I would zoom myself in a zone of unbridled and unrestricted creativity where prize-winning literature would flow from my fingers like wine from Jesus' water jug.

I was a vegetable.

So, I don't think I'll be doing that again. By ten last night, I was getting into bed, and I settled down for a totally uninterrupted eleven hours, which was absolute bliss. I woke up, a new day, totally and utterly refreshed, and it was sunday. On TV that morning, they made Chocolate Brownie with Marshmallow sauce. Me and Chris are going to make that next, because it looked like the peak of human confectionary: sweet food's concorde moment. We watched the Carling Cup final and played pool, I actually beat him! And we just went to the pub to watch Top Gear, which was fantastic - one of the better episode i've seen, which is quite a feat as they're normally so good.

And here I am. This entry was going to lead into a review of 2 new cd's i've recently bought - Fall Out Boy's Infinity On High and Mika's Life in Cartoon Motion, but that blatantly hasn't happened, so I'll just say that Mika's record is consistently great, all the way through: happy optomisto-pop. Fall Out Boy's is longer but patchier: moments of greatness mixed (in this case by Neil Avron and Babyface) with spots of mediocre, anonymous emo. Fourth song I'm a Lawyer With the Way... has boyband backing vocals that N*Sync, in their heyday, wouldn't have turned down. It is longer than Mika, most definately listenable. Both albums are, most definately, great. I'll let you all get on now!

The Brit Awards: Random Thoughts

I've had to post this as 'Random Thoughts' because I can't remember the precise order in which I saw everything, since I was watching in the middle of a alone-on-Valentines haze which has now (thankfully) lifted, with the aid of a creme egg and an individual treacle tart.

The first thing that I remember from the ceremony has to be the phenomenal performance of The Killers:



They played the first single from Sam's Town, When You Were Young. Their set was formed from a giant billboard, the classic American style that Bill Bryson so often talks about adorning the side of the road in the mid-west. Behind this was a screen with The Killers' familiar black and white desert panorama: fast moving clouds and cracked, arid floor. The billboard was showcasing a giant 'The Killers' logo; but when the song kicked in, this fell away to reveal the band inside the billboard, playing against a red backdrop. Then, for the big finish, the background fell away, bathing the band in black and white desert. This changed to rotating, golden lights for the enthusiastic, genius finale. The whole song left me with goosebumps, the tv turned up stupidly loud. The Killers got a standing ovation.

The show was hosted by Russell Brand. I don't normally like him at all - prancing about like a modern - day dandy, thinking he's a cross between Oscar Wilde and Amy Winehouse, but he did a great job. His jokes were (mostly) funny, and when they weren't, the entertainment came from shots of famous people in the audience not laughing. There's been hundreds of complaints about his jokes regarding the Iraq war and The Queen. People need to get a sense of humour.

Red Hot Chili Peppers delivered a tight, awesome performance of Dani California, but I thought that it perhaps lacked some of the theatrics of The Killers' elaborate stage. As always, though, it was an exciting, flawless performance, Frusciante on form with some awesome guitar work. Oasis recieved the Outsanding Contribution award and played three songs at the end - very good. The crowd went nuts. Corinne Bailey Rae was charmingly inoffensive. Snow Patrol performed Chasing Cars. I have an issue with this song. It was voted, by Virgin Radio listeners, as the Greatest Ever Recorded Song. They voted it ahead of Imagine and Everybody hurts: the best song anybody has ever recorded, ever, in the history of humankind. I don't not like it. It's a nice song. It's pretty. The lyrics are insipid and uninspired, vapid. Perfect for pop-indie Top 40 mediocrity. Best Song Ever? I don't think so. As I said, it's nice. But that's too exciting a word for it. Nice might imply some sort of activity or passion, some emotion. Instead, he just lays there. Will you lie with him? Make sure his indie hair is perfectly tousled.

While i'm in the middle of a rant, I'll have to bring up the winners of the Best British Male and Female awards. Amy Winehouse, like Russell Brand said, talks like a cab driver. She looks like an anorexic horse, and sings like a strangled cat. Actually, I'd rather watch and listen to the cat. James Morrison is a sub-par James Blunt: pretty poor form when James Blunt is that bad. He warbles through in his nasal voice, sounding like a bored, young version of David Frost. He looks like Chris Martin: this can, at least, stir some sympathy in me. Then I hear one of his songs, and the only thing that's stirred within me is fatigue, and I can't help but fall asleep.

Scissor Sisters opened the show, and I didn't get to see all of their performance, unfortunately. It looked awesome, all floating and puppets. I'd heard Scott Mills talking about a dressing room for 'Scissor Sisters' Puppeteers' earlier and was intrigued. Joss Stone came on stage to present an award and wobbled about, looking too thin. She sung a bit, talked about 'big love to Robbie' and spoke in an annoying, pseudo-American accent. I think she's gorgeous. Her award presenting stunk.

I think that's the end of my Brits rant. At least The Killers were good.