Former Sony Interactive Entertainment VP, Adam Boyes, has shared the story behind the viral PlayStation 4 game sharing clip, which ended up becoming one of the company’s most iconic marketing videos.
In an interesting interview with Push Square, Boyes revealed that the video was his “dumb” idea, which was conceived on a plane to E3 2013. Boyes had watched a Giant Bomb video in which the team was struggling to grasp Microsoft’s game sharing policies, which led him to come up with a plan to put a message out that highlighted the ease of sharing used PlayStation 4 games.
Sony’s executives loved the idea. However, former president Jack Tretton didn’t want it to be a part of the actual E3 press conference because it wasn’t a “corporate message.” As a result, the video was released on YouTube.
Boyes also revealed that he initially didn’t plan to be in the video but when he approached Shuhei Yoshida to star in the clip, Yoshida convinced Boyes to make an appearance with him because he was the one who had come up with the concept.
“We had some takes where we were like ‘That was easy’ but that’s Target’s tagline,” Boyes recalled. “So, in the end, we just went with a thanks.”
“As soon as Jack announced the policies [on game sharing], we both tweeted the exact same time a link to that video,” Boyes continued. “I remember because I had to type on Shu’s phone to make sure it was perfect and I couldn’t copy and paste so I was putting in the YouTube address. We hit send and the meme was born.”
Might have been a “dumb” idea but it worked!
[Source: Push Square]
