FTC Hammers Sony For Misleading Advertising

Legal Issues

from the faking-it dept

Earlier this year, Mike had written up yet another post about Comcast doing its best again to prove that it was a company not worthy of a ton of trust. That specific case of Comcast d-baggery had to do with an advertisement for Comcast internet targeting “real gamers” by showing a “real gamer” playing a “real game” that “really” doesn’t have an online component to it. That didn’t stop the company spokesman in the ad from asking the “real gamer” if he was experiencing any buffering. Great.

Well, Comcast might want to pray real hard that the FTC doesn’t decide to take that advertisement on, since they recently hammered Sony over a similarly misleading ad.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (“Sony”) has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers with false advertising claims about the “game changing” technological features of its PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console during its U.S. launch campaign in late 2011 and early 2012. As part of its settlement with the FTC, Sony is barred from making similarly misleading advertising claims in the future, and will provide consumers who bought a PS Vita gaming console before June 1, 2012, either a $25 cash or credit refund, or a $50 merchandise voucher for select video games, and/or services.

At the heart of the FTC’s decision was Sony’s claim and suggestions in its ads that the Playstation Vita would generally allow for the remote play of customers’ Playstation 3 games. The reality is that most PS3 games couldn’t use the cross-platform connection in the pick-it-up-where-you-left-off nature that the advertisements suggested. Most games, in fact, simply didn’t work using the remote play feature of the Vita. The list of games that didn’t allow for remote play included, according to the FTC, the one that Sony and its advertising agency chose to feature in the ads promoting the feature.

Ads said you would “Never stop playing” and showed users enjoying the “remote play,” “cross save” and real-time 3G features. But the FTC says that despite the ads’ promises, customers really couldn’t use remote play to run most PS3 games on the PS Vita — not even Killzone 3, the popular PS3 game Sony featured in its promotional video explaining remote play.

Oops. Just as Comcast did, Sony allowed for advertisements to promote a feature using depictions of a game that it knew, or should have known, would never be able to use that feature. It’s the very definition of misleading. Hopefully, the FTC will be paying as much attention to the analogous Comcast advertisements as it has to Sony’s.

Filed Under: advertising, deceptive advertising, ftc, misleading ads, playstation vita, vita
Companies: sony