Is It Unethical For Companies To Misrepresent Their Products?

[London Geezer]

Nah, Sega was doing it LOONG before, with very high res pictures in magazines of their games like Virtua Fighter and Daytona.

Hell they even had 3D renders of Sonic, in the 2D era!! That's part of the reason i bought the game, it just looked so good!! And how about Nintendo and their Kong screens or "concept art" for SNES. At the time, as a kid, i didn't know they were concept art, which means that i bought games based on very very pretty images that weren't real. Marketing 1-0-1.

Sony wasn't the first. Other companies were doing it long before Sony was even looking at coming into the industry!!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Actually now that you say that a few Atari 2600 games leap to mind where the game didn't quite make it up to what the cover art showed it would be.

 

[TheChefO]

Nah, Sega was doing it LOONG before, with very high res pictures in magazines of their games like Virtua Fighter and Daytona.

Hell they even had 3D renders of Sonic, in the 2D era!! That's part of the reason i bought the game, it just looked so good!! And how about Nintendo and their Kong screens or "concept art" for SNES. At the time, as a kid, i didn't know they were concept art, which means that i bought games based on very very pretty images that weren't real. Marketing 1-0-1.

Sony wasn't the first. Other companies were doing it long before Sony was even looking at coming into the industry!!

I think the point is back then it was obvious. If you saw a 3d render of Sonic it was obvious it was just an ad just like before that they would have large hand drawn scans of characters in mags and it was obvious that those were not expected to be in-game or "screen shots". The thing that was shady is where you're not just trying to "show your game in the best light" but pushing beyond that into misleading people and making them question "is this real?". If you saw a sc of a game and it had aa out the yin but was also low res enough to be real then you'd say "crap that game looks great" and hours/days later you played the game you'd still say it looks good as it looked head and shoulders above any other game on the market that you'd seen up to that point anyway. But I think that's the first truly misleading ad I've seen.

 

[Fafalada]

The only negative for Sony was that it seems they were to successful at E3 and even today many gamers still believe many of those CG trailers to be real and as the screen shots are slowly being released a more negative reaction than probably warranted is coming to the fore.

Sony tried All-realtime approach with PS2 - and they are STILL getting bashed for "lying" about it by gamers and beer-and-peanuts munching press alike - 6 years later, after those demos have been proven to be conservative by actual software a hundred times over.

Arguing that using mostly CG this time was somehow worse for their reputation is mildly put - ridiculous. If they were gonna have to eat complaints about "techdemos and teh lies" anyway - might as well make the most of the showing itself then.

 

[-tkf-]

Sony tried All-realtime approach with PS2 - and they are STILL getting bashed for "lying" about it by gamers and beer-and-peanuts munching press alike - 6 years later, after those demos have been proven to be conservative by actual software a hundred times over..

The fun part is that from what we have seen and read the PS3 looks even more likely to fullfill those promises. But seeing the reaction to the MGS4 trailer is almost as seeing the MGS2 reaction. Impossible! somehow i think both the 360 (if Microsoft lets it run it´s course this time) and the PS3 will surpass the Killzone "demo. I still wonder what the next gen and nextnext gen would have looked like on the XBOX

 

[Pugger]

Faf, I never said or implied it has denting the reputation of Sony or anyone else. Sony were not to blame for the infamous arguments regarding what was real and what wasn't. As I pointed out poor quality ****** hacks were. I work in PR and the whole of the Sony's E3 presentation was a show floor managed PR triumph, they stole MS thunder job done.

Problem is Sony did make good at E3 but its come to a time where screens are being shown and "some" gamers are still shocked when the actual games don't look quite as the good as the old trailers. And if you are indicating that the CG trailers that Sony showed may be possible in terms of modeling, animation, clarity etc in the future then great!

 

[lefizz]

Faf, I never said or implied it has denting the reputation of Sony or anyone else. Sony were not to blame for the infamous arguments regarding what was real and what wasn't. As I pointed out poor quality ****** hacks were. I work in PR and the whole of the Sony's E3 presentation was a show floor managed PR triumph, they stole MS thunder job done.

If Sonys E3 was such a masterstroke how come it pissed off loads of people. Quite obviously lying to hacks on video is botehr stupid and breeds contempt. A friend of mine actually worked as a producer on the killzone 'video' and the morning it was shown at E3 she sent me a QT. This was 15 minutes after it was show but before Sony plebs started stating it was retime. Seriously lying to the public when the end product will probably look about a generation away from what you have been shown is stupid.

MS might have done a lot in other area than is very morally dubiously but they have treated fans of the xbox with the utmost respect. they have never once to my knowledge shown stuff off and said it was realtime. Instead they showed actual builds in engine which to be honest looked quite ropey and yet they now have the moral high ground. Also with game such as GoW they are starting to produce engines which look more and more like realtime CG. This IS THE WAY TO DO IT. Build ever better looking games ratehr than wowign people with CG and tehn selling them short when they buy the games.

Sony really have a PR nighmare on there hands at the moment, even worse in the PAL region.

The only thing that can reverse this are strong games and the launch line up sounds very dull to me.

 

[-tkf-]

Something about MS being respectfull

I would suggest you went back and reread the history of the XBOX introduction, lookup blur studios, yeah, the same guys that made the PS3 Killzone thingy made the XBOX robot thingy "Rendered to spec".

Same "lie", except we are yet to see anything that resembles the Robot demo, the PS2 on the other hand, surpassed the "demos". And since you took up the subject, leaving the XBOX stone dead cold is not respect. Those that invested in games + hardware + addons etc are left with a dead console, only a few years after it´s introduction. hurray!

 

[TheChefO]

I would suggest you went back and reread the history of the XBOX introduction, lookup blur studios, yeah, the same guys that made the PS3 Killzone thingy made the XBOX robot thingy "Rendered to spec".

Same "lie", except we are yet to see anything that resembles the Robot demo, the PS2 on the other hand, surpassed the "demos". And since you took up the subject, leaving the XBOX stone dead cold is not respect. Those that invested in games + hardware + addons etc are left with a dead console, only a few years after it´s introduction. hurray!

The xbox demographic is one of cutting edge anyway. These same people (myself included) were ready for next gen.

Regarding the xbox 1 render. True it was misleading but the thing was it was obviously just a tech demo and they didn't flood the presentation with videos making you question "is that a game?- is that realtime?" only to have those questions dodged about later.

 

[_xxx_]

o anyone who hasn't told a lie or misrepresented the truth even once in the past, say, 5 years, should take the stand and lecture us how to do it.

Well I won't claim I didn't lie at all, I did selective speech instead which is also a sort of lying in itself. But I think I'm qualified to say: don't bother. It's plain wrong because it's against our nature, more specifically against the suvival instincts. It makes your life much worse, so just relax and do it the regular way, m'kay?

As for morality in business, just forget it. EVERY single company on this planet HAS to do it and also for the sake of business WANTS to do it to increase revenues, financing, stock value etc. Live with it, it's not about to change any soon

 

[Darkon]

I would suggest you went back and reread the history of the XBOX introduction, lookup blur studios, yeah, the same guys that made the PS3 Killzone thingy made the XBOX robot thingy "Rendered to spec".

Same "lie", except we are yet to see anything that resembles the Robot demo, the PS2 on the other hand, surpassed the "demos". And since you took up the subject, leaving the XBOX stone dead cold is not respect. Those that invested in games + hardware + addons etc are left with a dead console, only a few years after it´s introduction. hurray!

That reminds me does anyone remember that physics demo with mouse traps , anyone got a link to it ?

 

[Darkon]

The xbox demographic is one of cutting edge anyway. These same people (myself included) were ready for next gen.

Regarding the xbox 1 render. True it was misleading but the thing was it was obviously just a tech demo and they didn't flood the presentation with videos making you question "is that a game?- is that realtime?" only to have those questions dodged about later.

Have you even seen it?

 

[TheChefO]

Have you even seen it?

Yeah I saw it - do-able aside from the aa.

 

[Darkon]

Yeah I saw it - do-able aside from the aa.

right

 

[StefanS]

The most deceptive maneuver in the last year was the GRAW tv spots which used concept renders to advertise / misrepresent an already finished game. That one was really a low.

 

[Hardknock]

That was not presented as realtime footage of a game in development.

And I've personally seen graphics that far exceed that tech demo.

Ninja Gaiden

Splinter Cell: Chao Theory

Riddick

Doom 3

 

[Sankari]

Yeah I saw it - do-able aside from the aa.

Err...and how is this different from the demos Sony showed according to your words? "Is this real?" - ?

 

[Hardknock]

The most deceptive maneuver in the last year was the GRAW tv spots which used concept renders to advertise / misrepresent an already finished game. That one was really a low.

Yeah I hated that. Aswell as the COD2 commercials.

 

[BlueTsunami]

Errr isn't the answer apparent. Seems like this thread was made with no debate in mind, a rhetorical question even.

It should be unethical for any company to misrepresent their product(s).

 

[TheChefO]

...Regarding the xbox 1 render. True it was misleading but the thing was it was obviously just a tech demo and they didn't flood the presentation with videos making you question "is that a game?- is that realtime?" only to have those questions dodged about later.

Err...and how is this different from the demos Sony showed according to your words? "Is this real?" - ?

I answered this earlier ...