Sony may sue over Change4Life ad

I’m curious Pat, whats your view on this, considering MCV came out on this?

I was shocked when I first saw the ad. One of those ‘you have got to be kidding me!’ moments. That’s at the least a dead ringer for a PS pad (and I was fairly sure it was a dualshock, or similar, at the time).
I hope Sony give them hell, in light of this agency’s incompetence and negligence in attaining the necessary permissions. You can be sure Microsoft would also have kicked up a right stink, if one of their pads was used in a national piece of media suggesting that the usage of one leads directly to a shortening of life expectancy. I think it’s a horribly inappropriate ad, and I hope that this is held up as a taboo, and not something that you can get away with doing; especially in light of the progressions and expansions in appeal and broadening focus of gaming, into health and fitness, and genuine educational, as well as more social family avenues that have been made, along with efforts made to address concerns of the broader audience – cooperation for the Byron Report as an example.

A lot of past held stereotypes are increasingly outdated, and there doesn’t need to be lazy public-facing advertising reinforcing a luddite view of this hobby.

Indeed, agree with the last part.

I really hope sony sues them becos you could obviously see it was a playstation control and it makes the playstation look like thats the only 1 which could have that effect

What is that controller anyway? It’s apparently wireless but it’s not a sixaxis or a ds3.

It’s a third party controller, but obviously connected with PlayStation. Definitely not Sony – find the image and look at the bulge where the cable or mini-USB port should be, and the raised d-pad.

If it’s not Sony’s controller, they can’t do much about it. Sony may shout until they’re blue in the face, but it will do them more harm than good. After all it *is* an ad that promotes a healthier way of life than the one many kids around the “civilized” world are accustomed to. As for why using a controller that looks like a PS one, well, I guess, Sony has only its own success to blame there…

I’ve seen similar ads in my country both on TV and in print. The printed one had a chocolate croissant with some kind of sweets as the thumb sticks, dark chocolate pieces forming the D-pad and coloured smarties as face buttons – in x360′s colour scheme (green, red, blue, yellow) if you wonder.

They should forget about the lawsuit and just launch their own ad-campaign to promote kids gaming. With taglines like “At least you know they’re not out doing drugs” or “If they’re into games, they’re not likely to be getting their girlfriend pregnant. Because they’re not likely to have a girlfriend.”.

Yep. They could try, “You know we get really, really defensive every time anyone says gaming’s addictive, causes desensitization to violence or can bring on child obesity? That’s because we honestly believe extensive videogaming is a wholesome activity that improves your physical and mental well being. There’s nothing bad about it an any way. Videogaming is better for children than sport.”

That should get the message across.

I guess you two *DO* have a point there

I really love that idea Blerk. The adverts basically write themselves.