Are Massive Marketing Budgets a Waste of Money or the Key to Success?

Found an interesting article outlining game development and marketing budgets that has changed my approach to estimating overall budgets (dev and marketing) but also got me thinking about whether these massive marketing campaigns are even effective.

I've got a couple of examples to talk about, and some assumptions I'm making about ads, marketing, and the future of gaming.

Gameplay (Hellbreak Demo): https://store.steampowered.com/app/3363290/HELLBREAK_Demo/?curator_clanid=34907549

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/91331/publishers-reveal-how-expensive-games-are-to-make-discuss-aaa-game-budgets/index.html

Concord: https://steamdb.info/app/2443720/charts/

Helldivers 2: https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jasconius
X: https://twitter.com/JasconiusGames

Outro Audio: https://soundbible.com/1936-Crisp-Ocean-Waves.html / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/