I can understand your sentiment about Sony and Nintendo, but in all honesty, their Crash Bandicoot ads made perfect marketing sense back then. They were the rank outsiders, and in that case you do one thing:
Guerrilla marketing
You are not the leader, you are not the runner-up. Being leader or runner-up requires specific marketing strategies and tactics. Sony used what made sense then.
During the PS3 launch, Sony would have been extremely stupid to pull off ads like that; contrast this to the PS3 launch and the Xbox360 barge floating along the Seine; that tells you Microsoft, the "guerrilla perpretrators" of that marketing stunt, are the underdogs this time around.
Nintendo? No, they wouldn't do such stunts, not because they are so very nicey-nicey, but because they have decided to go Blue Ocean, where there simply is no competition from a marketing standpoint, so despite being the losers of the last generation, guerrilla marketing is no longer necessary.
Essay Pro