Microsoft's MTV Move

If you pay attention to your news aggregation blogs, you already know that Microsoft is planning to unveil its next console on a live, half-hour MTV special May 12, days before E3 begins. Elijah Wood will host the public unveiling, which will take place at 9:30 EDT in the States.

I'm not really sure whether MTV or Microsoft benefits more from this move. MTV gets to be associated with the Xbox, increasingly a symbol of "cool" among their target demographic. They also get to make important connections with Microsoft in advance of launching their own web-based video game channel.

Microsoft, of course, gets the coveted mindshare associated with being first to reveal their new system, effectively cutting Sony's attempt to beat Microsoft by a good three hours. Microsoft also gets the huge MTV audience -- whose target demographic neatly overlaps with Microsoft's own -- and gets to take their message to the consumer without being filtered by the press.

Ah... read that last sentence again. Savor it. Let it roll over your mind.

It's enough to make an eager brand manager salivate just thinking about it.

While whole E3 press conferences have been streamed online in the past, and even been available on DVD well after the fact, most people don't get their hardware and software announcements in this unfiltered form. In the past, most people heard about the hot new system or game through those crucial "first impression" press summaries that sprout up immediately following the big conference.

But why let journalists taint the public opinion with their pretty words and potentially negative opinions of your carefully crafted event? Skip the middleman and beam your video advertorial directly to the minds of millions of potential consumers -- with no pesky press commentaries until you've already had your say.

Should game journalists be worried about this move? I'd say so. If consumers take to this type of direct-mass-marketing-video-game-unveiling-event, then the game press' position as official arbiter of what's new, what's cool, and what's important in the game industry could be very highly undermined. I'm not saying the game journalist as a species would totally dissappear, but their clout, as a group, could well be diminished.

Hardware makers could become even more secretive about their developments, ignoring the press entirely until they're ready to make their grand announcement from on high, leaving the rest of us to scramble for attention. Large developers, angry about negative coverage, perhaps, could deny access to the press and decide to spend their effort on their own 30-minute prime time informercial instead. A game industry tired of dealing with a finicky press corps could circumvent them entirely.

I'm not saying any of this will come to pass, or is even likely. Some might say the scenario I outline isn't too different from how it is now, anyway. Regardless, I know I'll be watching closely come May 12. I make no promises, but some form of liveblogging may even be involved.