Microsoft Forgot To Mention You Don’t Keep Movies You Download, Gets Advert Banned
A recent advert for the Xbox 360 has been banned in the UK after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a complaint. The British public are very good at complaining and are usually rightly ignored. However, in this case the ASA found Microsoft were indeed in breach of Advertising Standards.
Microsoft were very happy to tell viewers that they needed to buy an Xbox 360, but neglected to mention that when you “download movies” you can’t keep them for more than 14 days (or 24 hours from when you start watching). The ASA ruled that because this was used as a rather large selling point, and is clearly going to mislead a lot of people, the advert should be banned.
So what was Microsoft’s excuse for basically lying in their adverts? According to the ASA, Microsoft said that “in the context of a relatively short TV ad, it was not viable to express all of the features of the Xbox movie download service.”
Yes, “all” of the features are what’s important here. Maybe you should also mention that you can play PS3 games if you buy an Xbox 360. Remember; if there isn’t enough room to write “additional purchase of a PS3 required” then there is nothing wrong.
Via: Dtoid
I had a whole comment planned about how I’m on the fence about this and about how common sense should dictate that $5 is not the price of a Hi-Def movie but in the end, Microsoft is wrong. If they had been advertising movie downloads to xbox owners… then they could see the price tag equivalent to $5(in Canada) and realize there was no way in hell that it was to purchase a movie. But to advertise to someone who doesn’t have an Xbox and therefore has no access to the priceing… well that’s just low.