Sony is resurrecting one of its most memorablePlayStationmarketing campaigns, it seems. Wednesday morning Sony released what may be the company’s creepiest commercials ever made. It features a military squad combing a dark tunnel before entering a dark room filled with beating hearts plugged into PlayStation 4 consoles. Creepy commercials have long been a mainstay inPlayStationadvertising, but this new one is something else entirely.
The new commercial starts like it’s a scene from themovieAliens. A squad of soldiers or mercenaries rappels into a dark tunnel. They’re very clearly afraid of something nearby, as they tense up in fear as they move along. At the end of the tunnel, they use a crowbar to break into a dark room. Inside the room are endless rows of beating hearts. The hearts have tubes connected to the arteries and veins leading out of and into the organ. As the soldiers walk between the rows, the hearts begin to beat faster. The commercial ends with it being revealed that the hearts are plugged into PS4 consoles, with blue PS4 liquid being pumped into them to reveal the four PlayStation button symbols embedded in each heart.
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The symbology of the commercial is a mix of blunt and ambiguous ideas. The soldiers tie into the idea of a PlayStationsquad shooter, though theAlienconnection is clear, too. The core idea is, perhaps, that this is what it’s like to play a horror shooter on a PlayStation console.
The hearts are also a blunt symbol. They symbolize the player’s hearts, connected directly to thePlayStation experience. As things get tense, the hearts beat faster and the soldiers grow all the more fearful.
What’s less clear is the interaction between the soldiers and the hearts. If the hearts represent the players and the soldiers represent their in-game characters, the interaction becomes somewhat of a mixed metaphor. Why the soldiers are afraid of the hearts isn’t clear. Why they’re afraid at all isn’t clear. It’s overall is still a very odd and creepygame trailer.
The new PlayStation commercial hearkens back to a wave of creepy commercials from the PS2 and PS3 era. These started with a couple of very weird commercials in Europe, then transformed into the iconic floating PS3 commercials. These involved a white room with a PS3 sitting on the ground. Something creepy or odd would happen and then the PS3 would begin floating. Perhaps this new commercial is only creepy because it fit the horror-shooter theme, or perhaps Sony is working on a new big creepyPlayStationmarketing campaign. Either way, it may be one of themost memorablecommercials of the year.
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