The Halo 3 ESPN ad was one of the best gaming commercials I've seen, but maybe it will backfire because the actual graphics and atmosphere are probably nowhere near the heights seen in the ad. It's very hard to show the superiority of 1080p games and movies through standard-def televisions, so I partially understand why the PS3 commercials were like they were. Nintendo has probably benefited from Youtube and television commercials for the same reason.
There has been some weird commercials here in Finland of Motorstorm and Resistance. There's a country song and actual footage in the Motorstorm ad and a finnish comedian saying some unintentionally hilarious stuff with actual footage too in the Resistance ad. I don't know about rest of Europe, but I guess Sony changed the advertising style because people in the US didn't respond well with the american commercials.
