How could Project Soul improve their PR?

[Party Wolf]

Pretty much a suggestion page. Obviously they can't announce what they aren't allowed to, but what direction would you like them to take with that being said?

 

[Foot]

Well having guest characters in other games was a good start. Maybe they could do it similar to Edd Boon with a responding twitter page. E.g. Edd answered to fan questions and Capitalized the letters E V O randomly in his answer hinting a new trailer. Maybe they could leak characters in a similar way.

 

[linkorz]

I think the two most obvious are:

Consistency. Sometimes they will stop posting for several weeks in the middle of one of their tournaments, and that can be disheartening.

Accuracy. The PR team seems ill informed about the lore of the series, making inaccurate statements like Viola being evil, and not including the fact that Maxi and Astaroth are enemies in their relationship tree.

Aside from that (and this is probably just personal taste), I think it's odd that for some characters they use their SC4 artwork, while for some they use their most recent artwork. This has been done for Yoshimitsu and Cervantes.

 

[Mage]

Firstly, we have to establish whether or not it IS Project Soul manning the Facebook page; it could easily just be someone from Namco's marketing team who's been assigned to run it for whatever reason, which would explain the inconsistencies with the lore. Perhaps it is Project Soul but with new people on the team whose knowledge of the series' lore is limited, but of course this would be pretty poor as you'd hope that a member of the team actually does understand the game and its story. Or even a third (albeit unlikely) option remains that it is a community member operating the page, since I believe that this previously was the case (the page was run by members of the community) but I could be wrong.

Secondly, it is more than likely that Project Soul is not allowed to announce a new game of any description but some sort of indication that one was at least being considered would be nice, because at this point a lot of people seem to assume (or hope) that Namco is simply biding its time until the Tekken 7 release, after which we'd all hope that the next Soulcalibur would be announced. This of course is assuming that a game has already been developed, at least up to a point where they'd be able to show it off but it could simply have not even been considered by Namco yet, and this uncertainty has us all desperately looking for answers.

Looking at their Twitter page (@soulcalibur) it is quite easy to find that there has been no acknowledgement of these new Pachinko Slots game which is worrying that they've made no effort to communicate what drove them to the decision of making it available on the slots, once again we are hoping that it's to make some money but at this rate it could just be to milk the series for as long as they can before tossing it away, we just have no idea.

It has now been over two years since Zane launched the site-wide effort to launch a Petition for Soulcalibur VI in which we had huge support and even support from the french Soulcalibur forum, and I'm wondering whether it's time to attempt to launch a second petition to try and get attention from Namco and perhaps even Project Soul and/or Harada. Hoshino and Daishi's Twitters no longer exist and so we have to turn to other Twitter accounts for their information. Would this be good?

One point raised by a French player in the thread I linked above was that they didn't want PS to rush the game and end up creating another unfinished game which was a valid point at the time but I think now that they've had over four years to think about it, hell it's even coming up to five years in a few months and I think that we deserve some sort of answer.

Edit: Just to include, I've found the screenshot which shows Project Soul alluding to something coming (bear in mind that this was posted 5th November 2014).

Spoiler: Screenshot

 

[Project Bokuho]

Anyone still remember this? xD

 

[JohnBoyAdvance]

Probably just announcing a game or product would improve things. Developing a Soul Calibur bible would be helpful too.

Dont think developing a Yoshi Ono/Harada/Ed Boon guy would be best though. People feel more protective of Soul Calibur than other fighters. I just find that. ( A lot of UGH I EXPECT TITS IN DEAD OR ALIVE BUT NOT SOUL CALIBUR! comments over the years.)

Imagine if they had a guy like Harada for SoulCalibur: Right seeing as you like military games we are taking out Ivy and putting in Soap from CoD: ModWar. Just for America.

Or Ed: Just gonna have a few of the least popular characters brutally killed in the first pages of our comics.

Or Yoshi: *Posts a pic of Ivy bobblehead in front of an arcade stick.*

I love those guys but still.

 

[4cam10]

Probably just announcing a game or product would improve things. Developing a Soul Calibur bible would be helpful too.

Dont think developing a Yoshi Ono/Harada/Ed Boon guy would be best though. People feel more protective of Soul Calibur than other fighters. I just find that. ( A lot of UGH I EXPECT TITS IN DEAD OR ALIVE BUT NOT SOUL CALIBUR! comments over the years.)

Imagine if they had a guy like Harada for SoulCalibur: Right seeing as you like military games we are taking out Ivy and putting in Soap from CoD: ModWar. Just for America.

Or Ed: Just gonna have a few of the least popular characters brutally killed in the first pages of our comics.

Or Yoshi: *Posts a pic of Ivy bobblehead in front of an arcade stick.*

I love those guys but still.

Forgive my late response to this but we technically have this Soul Calibur Guy with Daishi already and it didn't really work out well for quite a few people.
I mean that would technically prove your point that the Soul Calibur Guy didn't really help us in the long run I'm just pointing that out.

 

[JohnMcKee]

One point raised by a French player in the thread I linked above was that they didn't want PS to rush the game and end up creating another unfinished game which was a valid point at the time but I think now that they've had over four years to think about it, hell it's even coming up to five years in a few months and I think that we deserve some sort of answer.

That's a good point. However, to me, announcing a game and rushing it aren't connected at all. I'd prefer to have to wait for something that has been announced to be released than to wait for something to happen.

Of course they can't be too transparent about the game (telling what the storyline and characters will be), but at least announcing that something is worked on IS basic PR. You can't create a hype for something that doesn't exist: tweets from 2014 were telling us to be patient and then, nothing, not a single word except wrong or obvious trivia.

To me, they should have more interactions with some people (as they did back in 2014) and at least drop something we could be hyped about: a date, a logo, a simple sentence. Now we've been waiting for years for something to happen only to see their characters being guests in other games... Which would be good if it meant something: having characters from a "finished" series is just a simple nod, it doesn't create the hype for something supposedly new.

A good PR is about the right amount of revelation, interactions and the creation of desire. So far, imho, PS hasn't done much, except disappointing and ignoring the community.