Where is the publicity?

[Max Bain]

This is a german game and in german game sites I have only seen one tiny articles about Split Vendetta. Mount and Blade 2 came out 1 day before Split and 3.0 and got tons of news even if it lacks a lot of content and is not even a german company. Dont know if it is better in other countries.

I am really confused.. is it because Ego is not communicating with them or is it the game sites politics that they dont write about X4 anyomore?
I mean really... X4 is not even mentioned in the games that come/came out in March on most sites.
Its no wonder if X4 is not played a lot if people dont see this game.

I would have expected to read at least one article about 3.0 and its huge content and one article about Split Vendetta and I am not talking about a test but about a preview. A test should also come in a few days of course.

I dont know who (if Ego or the game web sites) but someone is doing something wrong .

[chew-ie]

I'd say there is money involved - and you never get the real reasons uncovered

It's true - it's very odd that no one picked up the story of this release so far.

[wasted90]

mount & blades playerbase is kind of bigger. its relevant for more people. x games are a niche in a niche. but seeing so many people play after 3.0 and sv was dropped i have hope that things now go better for the game.

[Matthew94]

When I saw threads on reddit about X4 3.0 and SV, a lot of people are still feeling burned over Rebirth and the bad launch of X4.

Seeing as 3.0 has only just came out officially, it'll probably be a few months before public opinion changes on X4.

[Max Bain]

mount & blades playerbase is kind of bigger. its relevant for more people. x games are a niche in a niche. but seeing so many people play after 3.0 and sv was dropped i have hope that things now go better for the game.

I think that that the game sites do have an effect on the size of a player base. If you get spammed on these sites with news about every little thing that is going on in that game, people got interested and might try it out. If no one ever notice that X4 exists, the playerbase will stay small forever. Without the publicity of Mount and Blade I am pretty sure that the game wouldnt have so many players right now.

[Gregory]

I will try to keep this short, since I prefer doing my work than talking about it A lot of different reasons come to play here in my opinion. An update / expansion, even if it is as big as ours, rarely has the same news worth to the media as a new release (even if just early access). As mentioned by Matthew94, the initial reception by the media of X4 back in 2018 was a rather negative one, so re-building burned bridges is quite an effort. And wasted90 also has a point with the niche description of the series.

Having said that, games coverage has changed a lot in the past ten years. I'd say in order to attract new players to the series, streaming platforms, YouTube, social media and direct communication from the developer (for example via Steam, informing several hundred thousand people that have wishlisted X4) have become way more important than traditional games media. And this is working great in the first two days after release, with high triple-digit-percentage growth on hours streamed, videos viewed, mentions on Twitter etc. Something like this is much more effective these days in terms of purchase conversion than a news on a website (I'm highly generalizing here, but I guess you get the point I'm trying to make).

Still, I'm working all different angles obviously, and we did have some nice coverage in the more traditional media, with just two big examples being Rock, Paper, Shotgun and 4gamer. With media outlets of that size (both mentioned are among the biggest of their countries), we can actually see people coming from those articles to our Steam page. Since you specifically mentioned German game sites, keep an eye out for a Gamestar TV episode on us shortly.

Given all that content creator and community power - don't hold back on spreading the news yourselves

[Max Bain]

I will try to keep this short, since I prefer doing my work than talking about it A lot of different reasons come to play here in my opinion. An update / expansion, even if it is as big as ours, rarely has the same news worth to the media as a new release (even if just early access). As mentioned by Matthew94, the initial reception by the media of X4 back in 2018 was a rather negative one, so re-building burned bridges is quite an effort. And wasted90 also has a point with the niche description of the series.

Having said that, games coverage has changed a lot in the past ten years. I'd say in order to attract new players to the series, streaming platforms, YouTube, social media and direct communication from the developer (for example via Steam, informing several hundred thousand people that have wishlisted X4) have become way more important than traditional games media. And this is working great in the first two days after release, with high triple-digit-percentage growth on hours streamed, videos viewed, mentions on Twitter etc. Something like this is much more effective these days in terms of purchase conversion than a news on a website (I'm highly generalizing here, but I guess you get the point I'm trying to make).

Still, I'm working all different angles obviously, and we did have some nice coverage in the more traditional media, with just two big examples being Rock, Paper, Shotgun and 4gamer. With media outlets of that size (both mentioned are among the biggest of their countries), we can actually see people coming from those articles to our Steam page. Since you specifically mentioned German game sites, keep an eye out for a Gamestar TV episode on us shortly.

Given all that content creator and community power - don't hold back on spreading the news yourselves

I agree that streaming is more important than the classical game sites, but I also think that some streamers would get more interested in streming X4 if they would have the impression that X4 is more active right now and got a lot of new content (by reading some more articles on big game sites).
I also think that there has not been a better timing for spreading X4 infos and advertisements than 1 week ago to some few more days in the future.
3.0 is a huge step farward and Split Vendetta does nearly everything right. So now its time for letting the gamers know this .
I also have noticed that there exists a lot of videos with Bernd and so, thats why I am so confused because I did not even saw one single more detailed article about X4 3.0 and Split so far.

Its sad that game sites often only concentrate whats played a lot and not whats really good/innovative - like with sports.