Sony responds to animal slaughter accusations
The Mail on Sunday was the first to run the story of Sony's press event, which involved a dead goat and topless women.
The story originally appeared in The Mail on Sunday.
In its response, Sony has confirmed what did and didn't happen. The first thing it wanted to clear up was that only twenty journalists were present, none from the UK or the Daily Mail and none from The Official PlayStation Magazine, who also ran the story.
The goat that was used as the parties centrepiece was also not decapitated at the party, but was purchased from a local butcher and the entrails offered to those in attendance were a traditional Greek soup in disguise.
SCEE has also announced it will be launching an inquiry to "establish the circumstances behind the event in order to ensure this does not happen again. We also apologise to anyone offended by the article in Official PlayStation Magazine."
The full response can be read at games website, Kotaku.
Still, one has to wonder just what reaction Sony was hoping for using topless women and dead goats to advertise a computer game. What ever would Jack Thompson say?
That said, Sony has certainly achieved the press coverage it wanted, but whether it's for better or worse is up to you. Make up your minds and let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replyoh come on, topless women are used to prote everything and anything. Why is this game different.
People are quick to jump on sony from news they read and believe everyword even though the people writing the story were never there and knew of the facts. I dont trust news that comes second or third hand.
But it's morally correct for millions of people to attend a ceremony every Sunday and eat the flesh and drink the blood of a come-to-life zombie from 2000 years ago in the hopes that it will give them immortality....
Hmm....
It's becayse these women were actually topless with body paint, rather then normal topless meaning skimpy tops.
Don't even get me started on organised religion ;)
LOL!
But I think they went to far with this, and overall gives a bad view of Sony. Not that I care, they do a good job of that regardless of decapitated goats looking bad in the public eye. The gaming industry is criticized enough without getting groups like PETA pissed off.
Last I checked there wern't goes in GoW? Maybe a new race of savage goats in GoW2?
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The thing for me is that while stories of topless women & a dead animal have made such a splash in parts of the western media it looks like they hardly made an impact in the country in which this happened. The event (or false stories thereof) certainly did not fit in many cultures but in many other countries around the world women go topless in public regularly (admittedly mostly on beaches) and in even more countries markets have large displays of whole slaughtered animals. In those countries this is no big deal - It is even culturally correct. Sure, some PR person at Sony should have thought out how this would play in other countries but in the country in which it happened was it was ok.
The other thing is that yes, someone at Sony blundered, but the press (especially the writer of the original story) is, IMO, more to blame that Sony.
No hate was displayed.. Merely a point of view which is obviously contrary to yours and supports the idea that because something is accepted "pop culture", somehow makes it "ok" as opposed to something that isn't. Why is a system of outdated, archaic practices considered "ok" and a dead animal (combined with boobies of course) to advertise a video game "not ok"?
That's all I was pointing out...
So.. get stuffed, God-boy..
Indeed.
Secondly, how many of you can show me a story regarding bad rep on Sony that hasn't been written by Joe? It's almost like he just goes 'OH! OH! Let me write about it and put my spin on it" or he just posts about someone else's that has the same viewpoint as his. I mean he's even said he hates Sony and he's also spouting out things like 360 and Wii have better BC than the PS3. I mean I've already said this before, but I'm going to say it again: Wii games ARE Gamecube games so how hard is BC for that and it's also nowhere close to being on the same level as the PS3 so I'm not going any further; 360 on the other hand has like maybe 250-300 Xbox games so far that work if you download the specific firmware for the game which is still a hassle, so hurray for Microsoft. So with that said how is the BC on the Wii and 360 better than the PS3's? especially in the USA where it came with the PS1 & PS2 hardware built-in?
Idk, maybe I haven't been giving Joe enough time, but lately he's just been getting on my nerves with all of these articles he posts about Sony.
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Show me a good article about Sony written anywhere.
Lets just leave it as: I don't have a vendetta against sony, but my opinions on this event are that it was to extreme and designed to provoke controversy. Which it did. As ever, I'm trying to show both sides of the story. At the time of the original article there was only the daily mail to go by and Sony did not issue a response until later. At that point I did an immediate forum post about it and made sure my first news item the next morning was adressing this.
Good for sony, nice to see companies who can risk a little pushing the boundaries every so often :)
- Topless women = something most people can see every day, and some thing most of the rest of them would LIKE to see eveery day.
- Dead goat is a little gruesome to be honest but from the sounds of it Gods of War is going to be pretty gorey so you wouldn't expect the tea party to be a tea party with cupcakes and tulips!
If people are gonna get offended they can very well go home, the newspapers that reported it weren't invited so it isn't there place to get offended or even pass judgement - they clearly weren't invited for a reason. Its like have a christian turn up to the Satan worshipping church of there own accord then have them complain when all you do is worship satan!
A good article about sony you want? Look back to when they created the oh my god this is awesome Playstation, then the PS2 - sony vegas, lots of audio equipment isn't bad is it? I've seen some of their TVs, they look ok - also didn't they do something recently that send ripped through music piracy world or something, in favour of the pirates to an extent?
(Of course there is DRM! ;))
edit: saying this Im not joining the anti-joe gang, sony can be *******s as well as the next company but in the end if a company didn't do some things right they would be flat broke (RIAA are sure to go bankrupt soon... right?!)
I hate PETA, yes animal should have some rights but not the same as humans.