The Nintendo ads are my favorite video game ads in a long time. I don't know if I've really seen Nintendo commercials since before the launch of the Wii, the only thing I can remember are those N64 VHS cassettes that I got with Nintendo Power magazine. The Wii ads are great in the same way those cassettes were great, you get to see gameplay. I don't decide which games I want to play based on how good the cutscenes look, I decide based on what you get to do in the game. A lot of companies are getting better about this, and it really is the perfect way to show off the Wii since the whole point of the console is that you DO something other than pressing buttons. :)
The 360 "jump in" ads were great viral marketing and fun to watch, but they utterly failed to make me want a 360. I do actually want a 360 but suffice to say that these ads had nothing to do with it. :) Very entertaining though, and it does get the word out about the system and creates a buzz about Xbox Live, which is a great platform for online gaming.
The Sony ads are polarizing, and I'm on the "these ads suck" pole. I can appreciate shock advertising and trying to highlight the plusses of your hardware, but I feel like the only people these ads truly reach are the people who already wanted a PS3 anyway, the "YES OMGZ PS3 HARDWARE IS TEH BOMB!" people. I think people are better at seeing through the BS than Sony realizes, too. "This is how much content fits on a standard DVD." Right, so I'm supposed to trust Sony to give me an accurate visual comparison between DVD and Blu-ray, the new optical format they're trying to push? DVD = a flower, HD DVD = a handful of flowers, Blu-ray = a mile-wide field of flowers, riiiiiiight... Sorry, but even Joe Customer knows that the difference between 50 GB and 5 GB is not a hundred thousand flowers compared to one, and 50 vs 30 isn't 100,000 to 10. When you make obvious exaggerations, your viewers come away thinking they can't trust you.
On the other hand, if I haven't changed the channel or gotten up to get a soda during the Sony commercial, it goes on to show me some gameplay footage while the voiceover talks about the physics processing of tracking pieces of shrapnel from a grenade, more AI power, etc. The clip is fairly exciting and well-illustrated with the voiceover. This is good stuff that I think starts to reach beyond the fanboys.
