Final Fantasy XIII 360 Ad Using PS3 Footage, Gets Banned
Final Fantasy XIII has been out since March now (December if you live in Japan or imported the game), and released to a decent critical reception and better commercial success. Now, an advertisement for the 360 version of the game has been pulled from a UK television network on the grounds that it was “misleading.” The reason concerns the PlayStation 3…
A recent ruling by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA for short) upheld an objection raised by a television viewer who noted that an ad for the 360 version of the game actually used PlayStation 3 visuals to promote the game (PSLS spotted this some time ago as well). The ASA confirmed those concerns when they ran the two versions of the game on identical television sets side-by-side and noted that “there was a discernable difference in the picture quality of the two; the PS3 image in video sequences appeared sharper and colours were more vivid than those of the Xbox 360.”
Square Enix admitted that the footage in the commercial was in fact from the PS3, however their defense is that it was pre-rendered FMV (Full-Motion Video, also known as a cinematic) played back on the console. They stated that the game “had been designed for output in the same resolution…[both versions] were comparable in terms of quality.” Despite this, and approval body Clearcast’s conclusion that the average viewer would have a hard time noticing any differences in the quality of the visuals, the ad will not be aired again in its current form. Is this really misleading? Would the video have looked any different if recorded from the 360′s output, despite it being an FMV? Considering the game was compressed more tightly to fit onto the 360′s 3 DVDs (compared to a single Blu-Ray for the PS3 version), and those FMV videos also played at a lesser resolution – 576p for the 360 compared to 1080p for the PS3, it would appear so.
8 Responses to “Final Fantasy XIII 360 Ad Using PS3 Footage, Gets Banned”
hah, well considering the visuals is one of the few good things about the game, its really not surprising that they tried to dance around the fact that they used higher quality visuals to market it. While I haven’t seen the commercial, I’m quite sure that I’d be able to tell the difference between 576p and 1080p on my tv since one of the first things I did when I got it was check out my games at every resolution it could handle, and make sure it was worth the dough. (It was.)
Reminds me of how Sony used a PGR screenshot to advertise Gran Turismo. Good times.
Them jerks trying to take PS3s better picture quality and calling it 360s picture quality
What what did Square enix do that was so wrong? They showed the PS3 version to make it look better and this a wrong? In that case we should have all the eletronic store owners in jail for doing that blurry side, bluray/HD trick on you,
I swear in the store, BIG DIFFERANCE oh the normal side is SOOOOO blurry, at home. You can hardly tell the freakin differance.
More dirty tactic from Xbox360 and yet has been caught once again. I see alot people use PS3 graphic gameplay as pretend to be XBOX360 Gameplay when they doing PS3vsXBOX360 comparison video.
this is being made a bigger deal than it really is. side by side there running at peak resolution, there would be a difference. in a commercial aired to tv, not so much. plus, what tv station in what country are broadcasting in 1080p?
it’s a terrible game regardless which platform you play it on
The media circus just won’t go away with this debacle of a game. I’ll pray for Tetsuya with Versus.