I think the hype and excitement will increase the closer her release date gets
You sure? Naotora was badly promoted too but when arcade footage if her was released days before her release and when the patch was being sent out a lot of people were hype and whatnot including myself. But TBH the major hype was when she was shown at the DOA festival stream, god that stream was so good....I had a lot of fun chatting with everyone and staying up for 3-4 hours just watching everything.
I get your point but the hype your talking about mostly only applies to the people ALREADY playing last round, as of now, the limited promotion Mai is getting means that the chances of her bringing in new players to doa is unlikely since TN and KT arent really making that much of an effort to get the word out of her appearance. When Mai was first announced during the fest, a lot of game news sites mentioned it (do a google search and see what I mean) but now, the news has largely been forgotten.
Bringing in Mai Shiranui does not automatically mean it will bring new players. It's a partnership. A contract. Ways to increase business. If you guys thought the partnership was to only bring new players outside of DOA then damn, put on that space suit and come back to Earth from whatever planet you were out there scavenging from because this is simply hilarious. Some of you are extremely gullible and naive to just believe what your mind wants you to believe.
Team NINJA developed a partnership with SEGA and Square Enix for 8+ years. The arcade business (which won't die until it actually dies or gets outclassed by the era of mobile gaming and pachinko slot machines, which is still a long time from now) along with Square's Dissidia to help develop it's game format. TN does not always revolve around the game in it's entirety here, they have other shit to do. KOF partnership was just the start of things here, so are some of you basing this off of FSD status or something? you should see FB and twitter, Mai literally amassed over 4.4k in tweets and rising. It's talked about, just not in the manner we are all speaking of here.
There can be other factors involved here, they simply may not have the power to constantly control what to put out or showcase. I mean really people, it's a sub company under KOEI Tecmo so what do some of you expect? like what, you expect them to simply go over to the boss and just say "Listen here boss, we want to put out 20 more Mai videos in the week before her actual release because less 3 people said so"....really now....Life isn't sparkles and rainbows here. Might as well let Mr. Wah explain it to you guys but Team NINJA does not always revolve around DOA.
A lot of the kof folks from what I've seen are actually pretty happy with the way Mai is looking in doa, they lament the way she looks in kof in comparison haha.
I think you might be surprised by how much a guest character can increase sells. Much more people than what you think bought SC4 because Star Wars characters or SC5 to play Ezio. MKX released same number of guests characters than MK characters as DLC, because they know what sells since they released Freddy Krugger as DLC for Mk9. And I'm sure a lot of people will buy Tekken7 just to play Akuma.
Of course, cross stuff works in both ways. Some KOF players will approach to DOA and some DOA players will approach to KOF.It works the other way as well; I personally never played VF until I tried (and really liked) playing Sarah and while I dont play it that much, I would still be interested in playing future games. The same with Mai; if I end up liking her, I may consider trying out her home games.
The cross promotion is very obviously one goal of having a guest character.
It's not just having guest characters here. It's business and they will do it again in DOA6/7/8/9/10/11/12 etc etc.