Not bad.

At least they had the right games this time, instead of "Your girlfriend and your non-gamer brother all want to play bioshock and halo 3."

...and then it red rings.

no jk please don't ban me

blah, toilet girl wins hands down

grrrr... i hate consoles, but i think i will buy a xbox360 now. i am cryiing.. this ad is good, mate, totally good. i hope in 3 hours i will be ok again.

@blehh: BAN BAN BAN BAAAAAN! BAN BAN BAN BAAAAAAAAN!!

@Moonshadow101: You know, I had to stop and stare for a moment at that commercial. Sure, the people who started showing up to play these T-M rated games looked the proper age, but the kids singing the little theme song, all merrily and that sure as hell don't sound that old.

Hell yes. If I saw that happening in some random parking lot, I'd be doing the same thing; picking up a controller.

Gotta say, the xbox ad team does a phenomenal job. I like the other ad from this series with the guy para-gliding behind a truck too. It uses the same song with no sound effects like this one. There's something I really like about where their commercials are musically, similar to the bioshock and gears ads. Nicely done, much better than that recent ps3 tentacle ad with the eXtreme soundtrack.

A nice ad, but this fails in comparison to the cheesy Mario Vs. Sonic ad.

It's the final countdown!

I have to give props the Xbox marketing team. They do a pretty good job of making commercials that have broad appeal and also make some sense.

I like! But if this actually happened where I come from, that TV wouldn't be there more than 5 minutes. Hell, the parachutes and hot air balloons would be gone too. :D

Awesome commercial, even better than the first one.
Nothing beats adult songs with little kids singing (Panic, Another Brick in the Wall, etc.).

@Mr Brolly: lol... yeah. You'd have the place crawling with hoodies in about .3 seconds after the people dropped off the stuff! =)

This ad basically just screams, "We're Microsoft! We've got more money than GOD. Buy our console!"

@InsomniaBob: Does it? Sony have been doing ads like this for years. Cool ads that don't really show off games, but just promote the console. Ignoring the last run of PS3 and PSP ads of course...

@Psychotext: They wouldn't even wait that long - they'd be grabbing the stuff off the people dropping it!

@projectmayhem: Sony's commercials went from fantastic to "look at all the random shit we threw in...OH A SONY LOGO! You know it's good, now buy it!"

Interesting attempt to say "the 360: a HD system for the whole family"... Is it true? Hell, halo isn't that violent, and Gutar Hero is probably going to last your family longer than wii sports anyways.

Oh my, the Sony commercials. So, they essentially are now "ZOOMG AWESUM SOUNDS 'n Crap!" along with the advertisement of, oh what, still Resistance: FOM? Yeah, I thought so.

But otherwise, props to the Xbox Marketing Team.

This ad blows away any "This Is Living" advert, hands down.

That was a pretty damned good add though I must admit.

My thoughts on that commercial was crap, what a noisy song that got into my ears.
What then seems to me what brings people together is assembling a tv room from the air with an xbox and then playing on it.
I think it's just stupid and gives no motivation what so ever to even play the god damn thing since I own an Xbox360.

Little kids singing a Poison song about getting drunk is always appropriate.

too bad they didn't show the bit at the end where after they picked up the controller a hoodie came round and nicked off with the TV, console, and the heat-seeking missile in the background that shot out those balloons because they were flying in a no-flying restricted area and has been designated as a threat to national security.

yeah, great going micro$oft, we can handle truth...but can yooooou?

D;

Neat ad, it reminds me of that other Xbox ad, with all the people play-shooting one another. I dig how these ads take an interesting approach which makes them standout to an extent, while still avoiding being completely random and 'weird' like Sony's Baby ad, or the whole This Is Living fiasco.

catchy - i want that to happen next time i go grocery shopping.

Eh, it's okay. I'm sure all the 360 lovers are just dying to see ANYTHING on the 360 right now with Sony's new ad campaign showing up everywhere.

At the same time, the ad doesn't promote any exclusive titles. It's more like a commercial for GHIII than the 360. Then the tag line "play all the games everyone wants to play" doesn't really sell me on the system. If the same game is available on another console then wouldn't be I playing "most" of the games everyone wants to play? That's the age old question with any console but again, the ad doesn't seem to speak specifically to the console.

Having said that, if Sony's not promoting one of the hottest games on the market then it was smart of MS to let everyone know that this game is available on their system.

Moreover, it does appear that music games are all the rage. Sony's upcoming SingStar will be a great feather in their cap in capturing more of that audience.

@incredibilistic: I wish I had time to watch commercials for the 360. Unfortunately, I'm too busy playing games on the 360.

@Onizuka-GTO: Well godamn, you spelt it "micro$oft" you must be freking hardcore and shit.

@incredibilistic: There's plenty on the 360. This commercial is ABOUT the 360 however. While it does promote the 360 exclusive Scene It, the other exclusives are generally rated M so they have their own commercial.

I don't see how this is a good ad. It's not bad, mind you. Just so bland I might have fallen asleep for a few seconds in the middle were it not for the music.

A few years ago, here in France, there was a particularly irritating trend set off by an Evian ad: every other commercial and TV show featured children's choirs as background music. No, kids' voices don't automatically make a song cute or fun or catchy. They just make it annoying. But that's just me, I guess.

...might explain my lack of enthusiasm for this clip.

Hmm, I should get a shrink and talk to him/her about it.

Dude, I want a hot air balloon with a couch instead of a basket! That would be killer! That is...if it had seat belts or something. I don't have a death wish. But yeah, great commercial. I'm glad to see that MS still has a little charm left in its bag of tricks.

I saw another version of this ad. Same style but different. Maybe that ad is geared towards the American market whereas the one I saw is aimed at the UK market.

Reminds me of the Play B3yond ads from last year that had almost nothing to do with gameplay, or showed like two seconds of a game being played like this ad did. I mean, it showed the title screen for GH3 but that was it. Scene It made a cameo, but a "Starting at 279" would have really made a difference. And maybe a bigger focus on games, rather than the whole entertainment center, which is good, but I'd like to have seen more games to play on the console.

Not bad.

I would think the Scene It controllers and guitar controller would be great to show families or couples playing casual games...but this is a good start.

"From $279" as DMeisterJ suggested, would also be a good idea.

Maybe I just like the CM because Japan's support center was nice yesterday on the phone, had Pelican Super Delivery here to get my Xbox less than 8 hours later, and should hopefully have a working Xbox 360 back to me within two weeks.

this commercial is no where near as good as the one that gotted banned for xbox live. Its a bunch of people in a train station and they all start pretendin their hands r guns and "shooting" each other. If u havnt seen it u should go you tube it.

I'm kind of surprised no one has said the first thing that I thought when I saw the commercial (on the teevee). Microsoft is copying Nintendo.

So that was my first, now I'm realizing they are beginning to aggressively capture the family/casual audience. It's a good move considering that an offering like the Live Marketplace would be a great place for that audience to start, but they're not using that at all.

Now, I'm wondering how long they're going to pursue this...

@MasterOfPastures: his comment is not banworthy IMO
---
except GH III is mulitplat i mean even teh casuals know that.

Otherwise yeah they are trying to compete with Nintendo obviously. Except with them you don't get two friendly Japanese guys coming around in a car. You have to do it yourself. :)

NEED MOAR COWBELL

@blehh:
lmao. And UGH, what are you guys talking about? This ad is f'n horrible. From the music to the random people circling around to play the 360. It's like Microsoft's trying to make it look like a Wii commercial. I don't think old people in their 70's are going to be playing Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 during their free time.

I must be the only one that thought that ad totally sucked. I thought the train station ad from a while back was awesome but this is just boring. Sony and Nintendo are definitely putting out better ads.

Oh excuse me, I guess they changed the games in this commercial. Well, they probably won't be playing Lego Star Wars or GHIII either.

Just so you guys know, these ads are also downloadable from the Marketplace.

Its stupid how Sony are paying for advertising of multiplatform games but only showing it on they're systems. I mean if I was to buy The Simpson's Game and I had a 360 then saw the advert and loved it and saw it was on the PS2 I would go to the shop see it was on the 360 and buy it for the 360. That game isn't exactly a system seller is it. Bad advertising

God help you if you don't use kid-gloves while manhandling a 360 like that.

Why don't these things happen to me????

I personally think they should use the montages they made for TGS and E3 (which IMO SONY very liberally copied for their SALIVA Song themed Ad Campaign).

@monkeysaresilly: the octopus tentacles are supposed to represent the 8 SPEs of the PS3.

it's definitely decent, but doesn't make me want a 360. this doesn't hold a candle to the Universe of Entertainment ad of the PS3 though.

I find it odd that anyone could see this as anything other than awkward and flat.
Why show people slowly shuffling over? Why aren't they running to play? Where's the enthusiasm? They don't even follow through by showing them playing GHIII.

Microsoft has a great system but it does have narrow appeal to mainstream players and the advertising is struggling to break out of this box.

Also this sort of imagery isn't a million miles away from the approach taken by Sony with their Bravia marketing (blend the real world with the surreal or unexpected) and cements the impression that they are playing catch-up.