 Sony Corp. said on Tuesday it has pulled a Dutch billboard advertising campaign for the new white version of its PlayStation Portable video game player and apologized to anyone offended by ad, which critics dubbed racist.
A billboard ad in the campaign — which Sony said was launched in the first week of June and created locally and exclusively for the Dutch market — portrayed a white woman aggressively grabbing the face of a black woman and read “PlayStation Portable White is Coming.”
Sony said in a statement that the Netherlands campaign intended to highlight the color contrast between the existing black PSP and the new ceramic white PSP.
“We recognize that the subject matter of one specific image may have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign,” said the company, which also apologized to those offended by the ad.
“I am pleased to see Sony taking responsibility for their racially charged ad and appropriately pulling it from the marketplace,” said California Assemblyman Leland Yee who, along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a youth civil rights education project called Sojourn to the Past, had condemned Sony’s use of the ad.
Yee is a critic of violent video games and has spearheaded legislation aimed at keeping excessively violent and sexually explicit games out of the hands of minors.
Late last year, Sony sparked controversy in the United States with spray-painted PSP ads that looked like urban graffiti. The stealth campaign featured dazed-looking kids doing a variety of things with their PSPs, from riding them like skateboards to licking them like lollipops.
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