That's a nice long commercial though for the UK but not the US. It needs to be edited out to be more for 2 minutes. I like everything and stuff. It's good but it's waay too long.
The Xbox commercial wasn't really that much live action in the sense it's trying to make a movie out of the commercial. It's your typical ad.. Nothing too out of the normal. I just like the Xbox ad better vs the Sony live action. They just seem unnecessary at times. They should just relate there commercials to real life people, not just gamers or a mixture of both.
Are we watching the same ads? The MS one clocks in at over a minute so will also need to be cut down to 30s for a standard TV slot, but it's this whole 'live action' thing I don't get.
The 4ThePlayers retro ad features a groups of real people, doing real people things in their real people home, transplanted across the 4 generations of Playstation. The Greatness Awaits commercial features ordinary people being transported into their games.
The 'Invitation' ad for Xbox does exactly the same things as the Greatness awaits commercial, with some added living room sections demoing the voice & motion-sensing stuff and the Skype snap feature (none of the other mm functionality because - HEY! - MS have only got that stuff ready for the US market).
Both ads feature live action mixed in with fantasy elements, both have basically the same message - 'This console will take you to new places and help you do amazing things.' - and use a very similar production mechanic.
It's also worth bearing in mind that MS are actually going after a wider market sweep from the start, since the strategic positioning for the Xbone - despite all the rhetoric about gamezgamezgamez (after they got hammered for TVTVTVTVTV) - is that it's a living-room multimedia centre that also plays games.
(Which is
exactly the pitch Sony made for the PS3 - next-gen home entertainment where you can store your music, movies, photos & games, plus it has a Bluray player for that shiny new 1080p you paid £999 for.)
