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.
