vxicepickxv:

Marshall Honorof:
A few copies of Mass Effect 3 are heading into space, and EA isn't responsible if they bring the Reapers back with them.

Of course not. EA doesn't think it's responsible for anything, except profits.

EA isn't responsible for the series destroyed by buying up developers, and later abandoning them after forcing them to quickly release a slapped together sequel.

/Maybe I should have put them in a sarcasm tag.

There, there, they can't hurt you anymore... *pats on back*

poiumty:

Andy of Comix Inc:
So... EA's marketing department hasn't learned any lessons from their previous gimmicky failures? No? Nothing from Dante's Inferno or Dead Space 2? ...okay then.

Especially when this game honestly doesn't need it. "Mass Effect 3." ...upon hearing that, you know if you need it or not. Launching discs into space and tracking their decent to Earth... it sounds cool, doesn't it? But it's so cheap and attention-grabbing, and does nothing for the game. ...I'm not a fan of this. Not at all.

Are you seriously criticizing ADVERTISING for being "attention-grabbing"? Seriously? That's like complaining that your soda is too wet, or that your car goes too fast.

Dead Space 2 and Dante's Inferno campaigns shed a bad light on the industry and gamers in general. This is entirely harmless.

I'm criticizing it for being attention-grabbing of itself, as apposed to for the product. The advertising itself is what will garner attention here, as apposed to the game. ...I'm not so much criticizing it, I guess, as just being baffled. It seems a waste of resources, for such a cheap gimmick. ...but otherwise... meh. You're right, it is harmless.

NOOOOO!!
Don't do it!
The aliens will think we are some stupid, shallow morons.
If you want to, launch something good, like Planescape Torment, not some powergaming dating-sim.

Heh i can just imagine some poor slob tracks one of these ballons, follows it intently for one week, does insane calculations as to where and when it lands, books flights to the part of the world the game lands in, packs his Xbox with a mobile generator and TV to crank up the game to be ready to play it the second he gets it. Beats to death 20 other people determined enough to get it .... glasps hands on the gleaming awe inspiring rare early copy of mass effect 3 to see..... that its a PS3 Copy!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

this is possibly the dumbest PR campaign EA has ever conducted... what the fuck are they feeding their PR department coke & meth?
and like other posters have commented, does ME3 really need a stunt like this? but i digress, the idea is stupid and wasteful

seriously they waste money like this, and then complain about how piracy is killing them.(granted weather balloons are not that expensive)... dammit digressed again

in closing, this is dumb, really dumb... that is all

I see this ending poorly. If you are desperate enough to track the movement of these things and follow them, you are desperate enough to get into a fight at a landing zone.

I kind of wish I hated Mass Effect so I could make the obligatory fire it into the sun joke...

Ah well. Casuals grr, EA console kiddies ADHD stick it to the Man Bioware is dead didn't like DA2.

Andy of Comix Inc:
So... EA's marketing department hasn't learned any lessons from their previous gimmicky failures? No? Nothing from Dante's Inferno or Dead Space 2? ...okay then.

EA has a great marketing ace right up their sleeve and it's only a matter of time before they use it: The Sex Scandle. By which I mean, EA should completely overplay the amount of alien (or guido, or wanna-bedo or, whatever) sex-making Shepard can potentially be having. Mom's may hate Dead Space 2 but you know what? Grandma hates it when Male-Shepard starts tongue-darting Vega's stink-tube.

As for this stunt though, I'm going to call it now and say that at least half of those games will end up submerged. The New York one will be the one closest to me personally but the closest it'll likely be to me will probably be the Chesapeake.

Zen Toombs:
C'mon EA, why are you giving the first copies of Mass Effect 3 to aliens?

They don't need Mass Effect - they already have their death rays and their post-consumer economies and their fully immerseive virtual worlds!

Maybe, like so many of us, the aliens are into a bit of retro-gaming?

Wardy

You can get the game early, but I bet you they'll say it's used and you won't be able to play online without playing $10 extra.

everyone is using the word space.

EA is launching six games into NEAR space. this is easier to do than actually launch them into space.

Kajin:
I wonder how bad the PR would be if one of the games killed someone on reentry.

looking back how they marketed dead space, they would market it as a killer of a game.

Racecarlock:
I'm not a marketing or finance expert, but this sounds a little fucking expensive. This is like celebrating a need for speed launch by buying 6 bugatti veyrons made out of solid gold.

no it is not expensive at all. you just need a string, a weather balloon and helium. that might cost you max 40-50$, tracking device included. they wont attach a camera since they don't want to get these copies back.

the funny thing will be that if they launch them at the same time one person is going to end up with 6 copies of mass effect 3, making this an epic failure.

SurfinTaxt:

Instead of doing this shit which, to be perfectly frank, is fucking stupid, they should give those advance copies to starving african kids to play. Or sell on ebay for like food or a bowflex or something

so they can play mass effect 3 on mudbricks while starving to death?
or they can sell the copies for food? to whom? and how are they going to ship that?
bowflex? so they can work out without proper nutrition? muscles don't work that way...

if people would really like to help people in africa out, they would invest in african farmers (50$) instead of buying mass effect 3 on their 250-500$ consoles for 60$.

Oh for...

EA are not exactly the most popular company in the world and for good reason but I honestly can't see what the problem with this little stunt is. As the OP said, there is a strong chance of some (if not all) of the games dropping into the ocean. If that happens, then it's only cost EA money (boo-fucking-hoo!) and, as stunts go, it's not exactly up there with Richard Branson and his whacky antics.

Personally I think it's pretty nifty but then again I used to routinely launch bog-roll-tube rockets (although 1000-ish feet was my record) so I might be biased. Nearly every advertising stunt is cheap and contrived but that's the whole point! As much as I hate to admit it, it's often a case of the worse the ad / stunt, the more people remember it. If you live in the UK and have seen any of those "Go Compare" ads, you will know what I mean!

In this case, the vibe I am getting is that the hate has less to do with the fact that it's a stunt and more to do with the fact that EA are the ones doing it.

The concerns about people getting hurt fighting over the games are reasonable enough I suppose but if someone wants the game that bad then I am sure they will have pre-ordered. If someone can't afford to pre-order then what makes you think they can afford the resources to track and pin-down any of the games that made it back to Earth? OK so the tracking is free but you still need to travel to the landing site unless you beat the astronomically-impossible odds and have it land in your butt-crack when you're bending over to lace your shoes!

And as for people getting hurt in potential fights, I can only say this:

If someone is so utterly pathetic that they are willing to fight over a videogame (in this case), iPhone, PS3, limited edition Star Wars figure (I actually witnessed this one!) and so on then, in my opinion, THEY DESERVE EVERYTHING THEY GET! It is NOT EA's fault! It's not their fault in the same way that it's not Wilson's fault when someone is mugged by a baseball bat wielding thug; it's not Colt's fault when some gun-toting, gang-sign-making fuckwit shoots someone's spleen out through his arsehole; Apple cannot be held responsible for the dozens of retarded Americans who got hurt tripping over the person who they just bodyslammed in order to get an iPhone first. When was the last time you heard anyone say car-companies shouldn't advertise their wares because someone was run over by a drunk-driver last week?

On the other hand, if you took the time to track the games, pinpoint the landing zone and hot-foot it over with no intention of fighting someone (i.e You unserstand the concepts of "First come, first served" and "fair-play"), only to be blindsided by someone who did the same as you but was one of aforementioned pathetic-people then are you honestly saying that you would take EA to court insead of / as well as the colossal divvy who trod on your scrotum? Sorry but that doesn't wash with me! By all means persecute Lardy McBollock-Stamper for living up to his name but why on Earth blame EA too? Yes they put the games up there but it was your decision to track one down and you should have known that there would be competition and with any competition comes risk.

I know it's easy and fun to blame EA, Sony, Apple and so on but the truth is that the blame lies solely with those particular consumers who were blessed with the power of being a twat. Arguing that the company has an obligation to do their utmost to prevent such issues is also rather redundant. What would you have them do? Release it in secret? Make people undergo psycho-analysis before they are allowed near the store? Not make the game at all?

They are NOT responsible for the actions of the people who want their product and those who ARE responsible (i.e the ones doing the fighting / trampling) will be the first to blame their idiocy on EA. If this comes to pass, I sincerely hope EA tell them to get-fucked!

Rant over.

Wardy

I can see this go wrong in various ways.

Like it causing property or physical damage, or people arriving at the site at the same time and a giant fight starts on who gets it first, causing again physical damage, or even deaths.

Not that smart a move, doods.

For a moment I thought this was going to be some kind of absurdly overly expensive publicity stunt, given that sending just 1 pound of matter into space costs about $1M; but no, it's just some balloons. If they had strapped those puppies to a rocket and launched them to Alpha Centauri, that would've been something.
In a few million years, them Centaurians could be playing our games!

inb4 they all fall into the sea

Anyway I'm still waiting for my the kit to transfer my HDD data so I have enough memory space to download the actual demo.

I think somebody at EA marketing department watched this video.

Well, it's a neat idea, and a step up from Dead Space 2 and Dante's Inferno, so I don't see why people are bitching about it. Now, if they start making a documentary about crazily dedicated fans that embarked on a globe-trotting adventure of tracking ME3 across continents, I'll retract my statement.
Also, knowing EA, you'll probably need a special code to access cylinder that protects the game box :P.

Screamarie:
Does anyone else get images of the movie Rat Race in their head?

I did :)

No, self respecting higher intelligence (i.e aliens) is going to install Origin.

The copies they will send will be no doubt Xbox360 ones so I really couldn't care less,since I don't own one.

Also shooting it so far that it would land in Europe and in my country is 0.000001 in a billion chance.

Considering they are making Origin manditory for Mass Effect 3, I wish they'd just fired the disks into the sun.

soooooo... The plan is to send a copy of a human made space opera about a human guy saving a bunch of extremely human looking aliens from giant robo cthulhus, while all the robo cthulhus attack earth because humans are just so much darn better and threatening than the rest of the aliens?

Yeah, that may not be the best example of human science fiction we could be sending into space, the REAL aliens will think we're all a bunch of egotistical douchebags.

This has got to be one of, ( but not the worst) examples of marketing ever. I am almost at a loss for words.

Since when is 90k FEET considered space?
Last I looked X prize was awarded for topping 100k METERS! Like ... 3 times and some higher.

EA again investing in Hype more than technology and art, much like we saw with KotOR3.

Awesome. Space is a better distribution platform than Origin.

Monkeyman O'Brien:
Ha. They do this. Someone gets it. Uploads it to the net. Everyone gets the game weeks early. EA bitches and moans about it being pirated to fuck weeks before its official release.
Dumbasses.

Yeah, that'll teach them to do something cool!

Syzygy23:
REAL aliens will think we're all a bunch of egotistical douchebags.

So it will be an extremely accurate representation?

Is this gimmick meant to distract us from the absolutely horrid Origin service?

Live action Animal Crossing anyone?

:Grabs Slingshot:

Ha this is awesome.

The game is being made mostly in Canada, why do we not get one or maybe half a dozen given the size of our landmass? No I am bloody serious.