Paramount now offering free HD Trailers On Xbox 360 at HDTV Xbox 360 Gaming

Paramount now offering free HD Trailers On Xbox 360

April 18th, 2006

Not a surprise to anyone browsing the Live marketplace recently — tons of movie trailers being promoted.

Paramount has decided to join the party - and many are speculating that this effort is two-fold. 1) marketing a movie today means reaching 18-34 yr olds, and gaming is a great place to get those eyeballs, 2) it’s a marketing effort to promote future HD-DVD releases.

Item 1 makes perfect sense and is compounded by cable/tv ratings that continue to slide, especially in this younger demo.

“It hits the audience in a big way - the 12- to 34-year-old audience. That’s the sweet spot of frequent moviegoers,” said Gerry Rich, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing. “They’re the early adopters. We think they impact and influence a lot of folks. They’re gatekeepers of what’s cool and what’s not.”

Item 2 makes some sense — although I still hold out that people rather download HD content, or rent it ( think NetFlix ), but don’t really want to own a bunch of plastic. The value is not in owning a physical good anymore, it’s in having instant access to the content, sharing with friends, tagging. mixing, etc. If anything these HD trailers will create even a greater demand for instant HD content — and microsoft should be pushing that the way iTunes did for music.