Empty Box Parade at PS3 Launch Event
When you are waiting in line for a console for 3+ days, and you finally get to lay your eyes on the “special delivery” of the consoles to the store your at….wouldn’t you assume those boxes were full and ready to buy?
Well, in San Francisco you would be wrong. Sony had a different idea. Have a “dramatic delivery of PlayStation 3 shipment” in front of many a camerman, news reporter, and journalists….and have all of the boxes that were seen empty. Now why would they want to do that? Is it because they didn’t want their executive vice president Jack Tretton to be able to lift a PS3 box without doing any damage? Was it because they had more boxes than actual consoles, but didn’t want to show up with only 100 or so boxes? Whatever the reasoning was, I think it was a stupid way to do a “dramatic unveiling” of the PS3s. Here’s a snippet of Gamespot’s article:
Ironically, though, the boxes the crowd was cheering contained something other than the PS3–namely, air. Yes, the “dramatic” delivery was in fact just a staged event for the press, cameras, and soon-to-be-PS3 owners. Though the boxes were authentic–even bearing air-freight stickers with a Shanghai origin and Los Angeles terminus–the boxes paraded in front of the crowd were in fact empty.
Once inside, the PS3 boxes were quickly broken down by PlayStation Store staffers, who whooped and high-fived each other a la Borat, believing their ruse had worked. The flattened containers were then taken behind a curtain–where over 700 PS3s already sat pre-packed in PlayStation bags, waiting for the stroke of midnight to be handed out. Inside the store, store workers unpacked hundreds of PS3 games, including Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Though the arrival had been a hoax, the throng outside would soon experience the PS3 for real.
Following the break is the video of the event, taken by GameSpot.
Sony PlayStation 3, PS3, launch day
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