>>13820402
First, make the game good. Get some autists who really care about game design and give them time to work out the best way to improve common gameplay types or to alleviate the problems that many consumers have with the type of game you want to make. The problem with many games these days is that underskilled devs are thrown into projects with the goal of making things profitable, which often means they cut corners and go for the exploitative route of DLC, microtransactions, pre-order bonuses, and misguided PR stunts and ad-blitz marketing.. and somewhere in there, they work on the game, but mostly just recycle assets and work from previous games.
Second, slash the advertising budget. If an 8 year old with his Mommy's computer can edit together youtube videos, there's no reason why an adult professional can't learn to edit together gameplay footage and trailers. Once you've got your video guy, have him do that shit regularly. Do dev diaries and in-house interviews. When some communications major faggot tells you to maintain an online presence, that doesn't mean paying out the ass to run full-page ad skins on IGN and GameSpot. It means keeping your product in the minds of potential consumers and allowing them to naturally build interest and hype on their own.
Thirdly, actually finish the fucking game. Since you're not paying an ad firm to send journos on 5 Star cruises as part of some absurd marketing stunt to promote a game that's not even playable yet, you can take more time to work on the damned product. At the end of the day, you want a game that will sell and continue to sell for a long time after release, and you do that by making a complete, fully realized, deeply engaging game that people will enjoy enough to tell everyone else they should get it too. Do thorough QA while you're at it. Day one patches are common, but they destroy consumer confidence, and if any of it is really bad, it may destroy any hope of your game ever being picked up or supported down the road. Look at No Man's Sky; It's practically a different game now, but no one will forget what a steaming pile of shit it was at launch.
Lastly, sell it at a reasonable price, don't be afraid to put it on sale since 50,000 copies sold at $20 is better than 10,000 sold at $60.