PlayStation‘s global marketing budget is apparently envied by Xbox‘s London-based executive, Michael Flatt. In a candid interview, Flatt — Xbox’s marketing director for Europe, Middle-East, and Africa (EMEA) — revealed that Sony heavily outspends Microsoft when it comes to marketing.
PlayStation enjoys better global visibility than Xbox, thanks to marketing funds
Flatt understandably didn’t reveal any data, but told Marketing Week in a recent interview that Xbox has to scrape by with little funds outside of the U.S. This is rather perplexing because Microsoft could certainly do with better visibility outside of its home turf, and has often admitted to being beaten by competition in major markets.
“From a funding point of view, we need to work really hard against our competition,” Flatt said, adding that Sony “regrettably” outspends Microsoft. “They’re blessed with marketing funds that we’re just not able to enjoy. We’re not blessed with huge media budgets, so we have to be quite scrappy really, and quite tenacious to fight for funds that would probably go somewhere else.”
Microsoft has recently been promoting the message that players don’t need an Xbox to play its games. Interestingly, it was recently reported that Microsoft plans to stop marketing Xbox consoles in EMEA, and limit inventory in the regions.