lol! wow, microsoft marketing people are a bunch of dicks!

Seems a little desperate...

...by any means, eh?

i think that boat is coming on to me.

Absolutely hilarious.

To be honest, though, Sony is killing themselves with their own product even without the help of MS.

That's hilarious...

That's priceless, I lol'd.

LOL. Love it.

wow, an american company, and not just any company but Microsoft dooing an advertisment such as this in Paris? Suicide lol!

Joke aside, Microsoft have some balls pulling this off after everything europeans have to put up with, especially the french.

This is almost as good as the beer concept.

Damn people are really intent on ruing the PS3... poor PS3, its not its fault it sucks. Its the bastard love child which was conceived in the middle of an orgy involving a waffle toaster device, the PS2 and some other randomer household objects.

Hmmm I almost sound like I give a toss about the PS3....

Thats great, now if only they had a price cut Sony would be DONE.

In before "Microsoft invented the wheel" fanboys.

Looks like the PS3 had a pretty good launch in france contradictory to nearly every other country thus far.

Thats the French for ya.

It's a free country (i think). Microsoft can parade their own giant banner boats whenever they please!

Why is that not in French? I though the French didn't think much of the English.

Im still laughing since I saw this... this generation of console wars is absolutly brilliant.... in comedy , that is. ^_^

Horrible Bable Fish translation of how the launch went down in Paris.

"Sony Computer Entertainment organized as envisaged a launching at midnight of PlayStation 3 on a boat which accosted with the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with a thousand of machines available to the sale. The event unfortunately attracted only one score of people on the quay, and 4 to 5 people maximum on the other event organized in parallel in Fnac of the Élysées Fields in Paris. One will note the unexpected presence and rather amusing of Microsoft come him also with his boat Xbox 360!"

Round 1. Fight!

lol I would've done something with fireworks.

just have it in the background at midnight, and then all of a sudden. the 360 orb pops and a huge banner the length of the eiffel tower drops.

pwned! No Nintendo party crasher?

Hahaha, I love it.

Ballsy move. Ignorant, but ballsy none the less.

lmao That's awesome.

That is SO great!

All they needed was topless models waving the people over...

Yes, i would have gone...

microsoft is just sad. tisk. tisk.

I do find it slightly odd that the "XBox 360 <3 You" isn't actually french. "You" is an english word, the french equivilent being "vous" or some derivative thereof. Weird.

Crashing your competitors launch party.

**Achievement Unlocked**

http://www.jeux-france.com/images16_4_19695.html

I wonder if they [jeux-france] kow that NIGHT PHOTOS OF Eiffel Tower are COPYRIGHTED.
And that they are braeking law publishing that photo?

That's an awesome banner.

IN ENGLISH.

I guess it's a publicity stunt meant to impress Steve Ballmer or something, because it would have been in French if it were there to convince French buyers.

Great PR move. Whatever firm MS hired in France gets kudos for getting the 360 some press on what should be Sony coverage.

Hahaha, this reminds me of Sega sending around vans at PS2 launch saying, "Sega sends condolences to Sony for their PlayStation 2 production number woes."

Oops. That didn't quite work out for them. I wonder if Peter Moore is responsible for both little escapades.

Epic win.

That was actually amusing.

And if Sony ever did something similar to this everyone would be on top of it and bashing....I love fanboys ;p. Still, funny move MS XD

@br549: The only English word on there is you. Do you think french people can't figure out symbols and don't at least have a passing knowledge of the English language?

@RedRedSuit: lol

@Hellsing: None of that is relevant. If you want to sell to French people, you sell in French. Period.

@libregkd:
No, Sony Marketing would have had a boat with a big banner that says "NEXT-GEN! NEXT-GEN! NEXT-GEN!"

They couldn't use "jump in" on this one because some of the Sony PR people in attendance probably would have done so.

LMAO! That's kick ass.....

hilarious.

CARRIERS HAVE ARRIVED

@Riven: Actually, every country in Europe has a very good launch this far, better then the xbox and xbox 360, England aint the only country in Europe and Australia aint in Europe, England is also the country in which the 360 has it's biggest install base in Europe, heck biggest outside the US I think (if not counting Canada!?!.)

@anonim1979: Are you kidding? This would be rather stupid.

@Hellsing: To sum it up:
Sony planned a big event at the Eiffel tower for the launch and were ready to hand 1000 PS3s but only 20 people were there. Same thing on the Champs Élysés where there were only 4 or 5 people.

I don't know, Microsoft does this sort of stuff all the time. I remember reading on here back in December that MS had bought out the entire background of the PS3 IGN page for a Xbox 360 ad.

Similarly, when Wired Magazine ran a comparison review of the PS3 and Wii, Microsoft was there with a full page 360 ad on the opposite page. Of course, something like that is more Wired's fault for poor journalistic decision making, but..

It all just seems tacky.

Doesn't seem like there were a ton of people there to see it though.

lol, MS marketing for the win.

Yes, taking pictures of the tower at night is a violation of copyrights. Why? Because it was lit by some lighting-architect dude and he "copyrighted" his "lighting". So by taking a picture of the Eiffel tower lit, he is "stealing" the scene, in some sort of nutcase way.

It's true. It's because of a law that prevents people from taking pictures of almost anything, and it all started when some woman won a case in court after she was photographed without her permission (like you know, when people film the streets in New York or any other city).

And it's not just in France, this kind of law is present in a LOT of countries, we are just not aware of it.

So you can't take a picture of a house in France, because the architect OWNZ it.

Glad to see that Microsoft relied on bribery and distraction marketing today to sell their product. Not, ya know, the quality of their product.

For some reason Sony and MS are maxing out on cheesy advertising. Nintendo is staying relatively quiet, except for Reggie. Some people buy this garbage, but it's really all about the facts and which games you want.

@ploeg:

You've obviously never been to france. there is quite a bit on english sprinkled into the language. And nearly everyone there speaks english as well.

I so want "Xbox360 <3's You" on a T-Shirt :)

classy :)

Too bad only about 9 people waiting for a PS3 got to see this in person.

How is this funny? They rented a flippin boat to but that banner on. Maybe some of those advertisements can go into fixing hardware problems or maybe buying more Sony exclusives.

haha, but i do wonder if it made another pass though. Now, that would be hilarious.

Hahahaha OMG that shot of the endless rows of crowd control...empty...BWAHAHAHHA

@SquirrelPhister:

@