Do game marketers hate the Super Bowl? GamesBeat Decides

On Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the Super Bowl, I went through my email in search of any reference to Super Bowl LII. I found some promotions about Papa John’s Pizza, Angry Birds, and Xbox — but nothing mentioned anything about a Super Bowl commercial. That was a pretty big departure from the last couple of years, when mobile developers like Supercell would promote their big ads for weeks ahead of the “Big Game.”

As it turns out, I didn’t get those emails because we only got one game-related commercial for the mobile fantasy esports game Heroes Arena. Once again, big triple-A publishers like Sony, Activision, and Electronic Arts passed on the opportunity to run a Super Bowl commercial. And I talked about why that’s the case on a special episode of the GamesBeat Decides podcast.