In the great tradition of punting interactive gameplay online, here’s an old Xbox ad:



It’s different because it takes a comedic viewpoint on a subject that usually tries hard to be ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’. (Remember that fantastic Xbox TV advert that got pulled because people pointing fingers at each other and going ‘pew pew’ was deemed to violent? Lock up every six year-old who played cops and robbers, I say.)

It seems that instead of making a traditionally non-mainstream pastime seem attractive to its established constituents, today’s generation of game consoles are branching out to, well, everyone. Hence the humour and lack of computer graphics involvement in this viral video.

It seems now that everyone is going online and has video-sized bandwidth, we can all enjoy the fruits of arguably the most entertaining subject of commercialization: make-believe worlds. So one can expect console adverts to have quite a stable viral following, unlike the one-hit-wonders that make or break some other brands’ campaigns.

Here in South Africa we typically miss out on some genuinely good TV ads that bypass this small corner of the world, so it’s good to see some other offerings.

Who knows? Maybe when Web2.0 has evolved to a point, viral videos will be the new TV (already the first US TV station has started an online distribution initiative) and, thanks to YouTube and the like, Xbox will be a big enough brand to diversify into the space-age cardboard storage market. Better change the name then, boys.