Ubisoft’s Marketing Mistake: Releasing Avatar Too Soon

Movie tie-ins, if handled properly, can be very lucrative for video game publishers. A game’s quality doesn’t even have to be stellar (Avatar: The Game earned a 60 on Metacritic), and if movie goers are excited enough about the film, they just might buy the game too. The problem for Ubisoft and Avatar, according to Stern Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, is that the publisher shipped the game more than two weeks in advance of the blockbuster film.