Sony Europe has launched head-first into preparing to win this year’s holiday showdown with a £82m “pan-European” marketing blitz for the PlayStation 3.
With last week’s official unveiling of the PS3 Slim, Sony seems to be moving full speed ahead – yeah, it might still be August, but no reason not to strike the first blow while people are starting to maybe consider what they could potentially want to think about getting as gifts for this upcoming holiday season, right?
That’s what SCEE is banking on, anyway – the company will launch an £82m advertising campaign across Europe tonight, reports The Guardian. In comparison to some of Sony’s, shall we say, esoteric advertisements, the new set of ads is actually fairly straightforward: Here’s the new PS3 at its shiny new affordable price, and here’s all the cool stuff it can do beyond just playing games.
“Two years after launch PlayStation 3 is realizing its full potential,” said Alan Duncan, UK marketing director. “The console is moving beyond gaming and gaming is moving beyond discs.” It’s an interesting push, to be sure – as CVG notes, Sony boss Kaz Hirai admitted that the focus on the PS3’s non-gaming functionality at launch led to the console having a bit of an “identity crisis,” with many coming to view it as an inferior platform for actually playing games. Two years later, though, that problem seems to have vanished – leaving Sony ready to promote the hell out of the other stuff the PS3 can do once again.
Despite lagging behind the competition in third place worldwide for the console’s lifespan, Sony seems in a pretty good spot this holiday – the new PS3 at a significantly more comfortable price point should prove pretty tantalizing, for one. One might make the argument that there are hardly any blockbusters coming out for the system this holiday season, but then one might also get smacked for being wrong, because the 360 has the same issue – they’re all coming out in 2010 instead.
