10 Most Controversial Video Game Marketing Campaigns Of All Time
7. PSP's 'Black And White' Billboard
To promote their upcoming white edition of the PSP, Sony decided on a marketing campaign that sort of made sense of paper, but created a myriad of problems when the company put those ideas into practice.
Deciding to create a series of ads that showed two people - one white model dressed in white beating down a black model dressed in black - to symbolise the white PSP dethroning the original as the must-have console, the company pissed off customers with the campaign's racist connotations.
In hindsight it's easy to see why the campaign caused so much controversy, especially with the images being displayed prominently on billboards around the world.
Sony eventually retracted them, apologising for any offence caused and insisting that they didn't think about the underlying implications of the marketing, but some people still saw it as a cynical and obvious attempt by the company to gain press by stirring up racial controversy.