Sony Deleted A PlayStation 5 Ad When Twitter Noticed Something Odd
A Playstation 5 advertisement had to be deleted when the internet noticed something very odd about the scene in question.
This article is more than 2 years old
There’s a legion of commercials that are either too suggestive, too ridiculous, or too senseless, warranting their removal from broadcasting. A recently-deleted PlayStation 5 ad from Sony just entered the category of removed adverts after Twitter noticed something very odd with the console.
According to IGN, Sony deleted a video ad it posted earlier, in which a PlayStation 5 console in the shot’s background was displayed upside down. The mistake is pretty inconsequential, but it only reveals that even the PlayStation’s head of marketing, or whoever’s in charge of making the ad, can be slightly perplexed by PS5’s odd shape. Things rapidly got the attention of the console’s fans online, prompting Sony to quickly remove the ad. Luckily, a Twitter user named Nibel took a screenshot of the video for the internet’s entertainment.
The video ad was the epitome of advertising, featuring an emotionally inspiring interaction between a father and a son before the father sat down to play God of War – a notorious father-son duo game whose sequel might allow players to play as Atreus, Kratos’ son. But, as you can see from Nibel’s tweet, the PlayStation 5 console he was playing on was upside down, with the disc drive located on the top right, instead of its rightful place at the bottom left. Apparently, whoever was in charge of setting up the console for the ad either had very little contact with it or simply neglected the positioning of the drive.
Sony’s marketing was very clear about the horizontal positioning of the console – the disc drive goes to the bottom, which is facilitated by the plastic stand that keeps the console from rocking on its uneven side. However, positioning the PlayStation 5 console horizontally on its top prevents the console from rocking, making it look like it’s intended to rest on that side, proving the design is puzzling, even for Sony’s employees.
Let’s not forget that Herman Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, who has intimate knowledge of the console and its supposed positioning, positioned his horizontal PlayStation 5 upside down, too, at one point. His video was also removed and replaced by a cropped version which removed the wrongly-positioned console. In all honesty, the console does look better upside-down, as it’s weird to position the disc drive at the bottom of the console rather than the top section.
In reality, the owners can position their consoles however they wish, even upside down, if they’re accepting the natural consequences of their choice. This would mean that they’d have to insert all the discs upside down, the USB ports would be incorrectly positioned, and so on and so forth. But Sony clearly felt that the incorrect orientation is unacceptable, removing the video without posting a replacement. Considering the positioning of the PlayStation 5 console in the video shot, it would be hard to crop it out as they did with Hulst’s video in December 2020.
This oversight, though funny, has very little consequence in the grand scheme of things, considering that Sony has bigger issues to tackle, like the disruption of the supply chain for their PlayStation 5 console, especially with the upgraded PS5 version right around the corner.
