PS3 slim marketing full steam ahead!

Norifumi Yamamoto doing his "thang".

It would seem that Sony have taken little time to get their marketing campaign off the ground and the first country to fall victim is good old Japan. The aptly titled “Play Face” campaign seems to be inspired by Phillip Toledano’s collection of photographs of gamer faces while they are playing games. The idea of the original photographs were to reveal the hidden characters behind the average gamer. If that is the case then I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into a few of the characters shown in this advert. A few of them look like psychopathic sociopaths and at one point an old man is shown looking like he is taking part in some sort of lude act. I don’t know about you but to me, Norifumi Yamamoto looks like he is happily sitting on the toilet trying to force one out. This advert had me hoping that I don’t pull any of these faces while engaged in a lengthy gaming session.

Now the controversy rears its ugly head in the fact that Sony have chosen to use Japanese celebrities with rumoured drug problems for a lot of the faces in the advert. With the Japanese not being the most liberal bunch in the world this is a little confusing. This is a country where there is no legal difference between smoking marijuana and snorting a line of coke, so it would seem that yet again Sony are trying to get people talking about their product by starting a little bit of a shit storm. This is a little concerning as there is always some newspaper out there looking for any chance to imply that gaming is bad for everyone. That being said while Sony might of had a lapse in judgement the advert is mildly entertaining and worth a once over if only to pray you look nothing like these poor saps while your having that nightly session of Gears with the lads.