Sony Marketing the PS3… in Second Life!

Cherry Character and AvatarThe metaverse has finally imploded in on itself. Starting tonight – right now, actually – the official European release of the Playstation 3 is being touted in Second Life, on a couple of virtual islands owned by an Italian marketing firm, in conjunction with two bigwig ad agencies.

This is strange and seismic on several levels. Most obviously, Sony just announced the online world Home for PS3, widely seen as a console-based competitor to Second Life. To make things even stranger, the event features the avatars of several characters from a web-based video also created to promote the PS3’s EU release. (Pictured: Swedish temptress “Cherrie”, in both real world and metaverse form.)

I just took a quick visit to the PS3 site in Second Life, and it’s already crowded over with a capacity crowd of avatars (i.e. over a hundred), mostly speaking to each other in Italian. Given the relatively modest audience of regular Second Life users (now about 360,000), it’s amazing that an international media conglomerate would make such a concerted attempt to market to them. Some might see this as a sign of desperation – but then, Sony’s Phil Harrison has cited Second Life as an inspiration for the PS3, and as Raph Koster noted, we’re in an era where user-created content rules, and the tail wags the dog. What happens next is anyone’s guess. This is living, all right – in a remarkably topsy turvy industry.

The extended announcement from Virtual Italian Park’s Bruno Cerboni, after the break.

“March the 23 is the official date of the [European] launch of the Playstation 3, the new generation console of Sony Computer Entertainment, promising a new kind of interactive experience. To demonstrate this promise, Sony Computer Entertainment, in collaboration with TBWA/Italy, Agency.com and Virtual Italian Parks has broadened the traditional media exposure of the press and TV to include the virtual world of Second Life. The Paradis3 Hotel, as seen in the movie Thisisliving, was built on the island Virtual Italian Parks, next to the island Parioli…
Full Cherry
“During the event people can talk with the Avatars made from the movie characters: Bubba from Haiti, Bruce the TV man, Plato the Venezuelan soccer player, HotDog the outlaw man, Kovac the soldier, Keji the samurai, Cherry the Swedish doll, and Lucia. These movie character Avatars will walk and interact with visitors inside the virtual Paradis3 set while visitors can watch the streamed complete Thisisliving movie.”

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