We’re encroaching on 25 years since Sony first revealed the PlayStation 2, and yet current PS5 owners don’t have much to look forward to in 2024. We’re on the short path to the PlayStation’s anticipated release 2. PlayStation 5 Proo. While this is probably the company’s biggest hardware release in the last four years, you wouldn’t know it judging by the boring affair that was its State of play showcase of the game last month.
After seeing Nintendo clean the floor with Microsoft and Sony with its the newest Direct games showcaseI’m stuck staring at my old Nintendo Switch, which sits at home on top of my old PlayStation 2. Because, as dry, humorless, and corporate as Sony is today, I’m reminded once again how the same company was once willing to market its gaming hardware. There was a time, a quarter of a century ago, between 1997 and 2001, when Sony wanted its PlayStation to be the dirtiest, most obscene console that can be purchased.
It was a better time when we could all sit back and laugh at a company’s attempts to sell to our worst instincts, itself an actual satire that somehow backtracks and becomes an anti-satire. Sony isn’t making much money at the moment, and by remembering some of these old ads, we might be able to understand why.
How messed up were the old PlayStation ads?
This came to mind last week when I spotted an obscene, albeit entirely false, PlayStation ad. Sometimes a fake PlayStation ad appears at the top of feeds. It’s an image of a young woman with her tongue sticking out, four pills scattered along her taste buds. Each pill is inlaid with triangular, X, circular and square buttons, which indicate PlayStation controls. This is not true. It’s so close to real print and TV ads lit by the same brand that it hardly matters whether it’s a fake.
Whenever this appears, people need to remember that it is just a conjured image surging in a tide from the perpetually backed up sewers of the Internet. Would Sony have honestly promoted a message that said, “Games are drugs and drugs are cool?” » Yes, it absolutely was, especially considering the commercials in which the PlayStation face buttons were displayed in a bloody manner. engraved in the sclera of a man or attached to people’s nipples.
Remember how out of left field Apple’s 1984 ad was? This was done by famed director Ridley Scott, a man who returned to commercials to help PlayStation promote the PS2 and, perhaps, games are a form of disillusioned counterculture, even when each disc costs between 40 and $60 each.
But somehow Scott couldn’t understand how the infamous 1999 “Mental Wealth” advert involved a young Scottish woman with pigtails and eyes that seemed inhuman. The advert, directed by Chris Cunningham, gave rise to so much confusion that some viewers honestly thought that the actress in the ad, Fiona Maclaine, really had her eyes spaced all the way to the ends of her face.
Even after Sony left its grunge era behind, the company was still known for its bad taste. Sony has already apologized for promoting a blatantly racist advertisement for the PSP released in the Netherlands in 2006. The unbalanced advertising is undoubtedly what helped give credence to the unauthorized advertisements involving blood transfusions for the Nazis And a man with a thumb where his genitals should be. Sony had to spend time and energy denouncing these two advertisements as foreign and unauthorized promotions.
In the PS3 era, we were greeted with less sexualized advertisements. Yet they still had a raw edge that felt like they were always distorting the message while still keeping the players’ attention – which I suppose is the whole point. THE infamous Baby Doll advert from 2006 basically said nothing about the console. This expressly didn’t make anyone want to buy one. But hell, even as a pre-teen, every time I looked at a doll (more often than most, I guess), I saw a PS3.
We might have been better off with self-satirical ads
The most recent PlayStation State of Play was the same, a corporate stream-a-thon where would-be gamers are expected to watch dozens of trailers for games they’ll never play, hoping to get a preview of a game that never shows itself. Last month’s Summer Games Fest and Xbox Showcase were similarly dry, devoid of decay. explosive spontaneity of past E3s. RIP.
This doesn’t mean we’re worse off because Sony’s marketing has left its rebellious phase. Advertisements are, by nature, abusive. They are psychologically manipulative and deceptive and greatly distract from the daily calamity that is the very existence of multi-billion dollar corporations.
What I appreciated about Sony’s old marketing was its ineffectiveness; it was a reminder of the blatant excesses of marketing in the first place. PlayStation ads of yesteryear most closely resemble the satirical ads found in games like Grand Theft Auto V And Cyberpunk 2077.
I’m playing a new game of Cyberpunk. Now that the game is fully stable, I can really appreciate the time and attention given to the human elements of our main characters versus the horrible, inhumane, sex-obsessed world they inhabit. Everywhere you go you are bombarded with exaggerated advertisements for fake beef, cocaine analogues, thermal paste toothbrushes, sex shops and other Times Square-sized billboards for things that you would definitely never want to buy.
In this way, the ads are cathartic. They were so ridiculous that we were given the opportunity to laugh or make fun of them. But at the same time, the ads were effective. After all, we still talk about it. Sony has remained one of the largest game console manufacturers for good reason. Sony didn’t need to sell you a console in these ads. That didn’t even sell you a “counterculture” identity. He convinced you to allow his ads to occupy your attention.
But I still believe they were better than what we have now. Players shared a sense of community, even if it was to allow us to laugh at a company’s attempts to simulate a counterculture. At the time, games seemed like a newcomer, a new medium for sharing art. Most big-budget games today feel the same, sanded down so there are no rough edges. This allows them to close game studios, lay off thousands of developersand cancel anticipated plans.