Sony Targets Mature Gamers with Adult Brands in Home

At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Sony displayed 3 potential brand sponsors for the Playstation 3's virtual world, Home: Durex, Marlboro, and Bacardi. Of course, if these were brands that had already signed onto the Home platform, Director Peter Edward would have certainly announced them. However, he did make it clear that Home is not meant to be a sanitized world, and mature users will see the same ads they would in world. "A large proportion of our demographic is over 18 so we will make a point of catering to that demographic – we certainly don't want to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator," he said. [via GamesIndustry.biz]

Since Sony is offering Home for free to its users, it seems to be approaching advertising models wholeheartedly. Yesterday it also discussed plans to allow user-generated content and the ability to host ads for brand sponsors in privately held areas. It's not clear if that will apply to mature brands, but it seems likely, though that would mean users restricting their areas to 18 and up. But as KZero pointed out, content creation in and of itself is a way to target older audiences.

"It's relatively simple to be confident that somebody is over 18. So it's no problem to have areas that are only open to those aged 18 years' and over. We are able to do that quite comprehensively, we have access to the log-in data that they use for the PlayStation Network," said Edward.

The other option is that a lot of the mature advertising will simply be done dynamically. Adults and minors can occupy the same space and simply view different ads. It'll be interesting to see what sort of advertising this leads to, whether you'll have the Durex game room or just Barcadi billboards could change the style of the world. Likewise, while handing out free clothing is a great way to advertise in Second Life, giving out a Marlboro t-shirt to a user who then goes to hang out in Disney's lounge might be seen as targeting minors.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority recently decided that brands can target children for things like snack food as long as they're posted in privately held virtual spaces. In other words, it's okay to have a HoHo Island, but not a billboard. That's a different ballgame than regulating liquor brands, but it still shows that regulation hasn't caught up to virtual worlds advertising.

Sony has also announced that it would use Home to sell third-party products for home delivery. If Sony wants to make money that way, it makes sense to target the 18-and-up crowd. However, while it seems a bit risky, no matter how secure Sony's console registration is, I'm sure there are plenty of gamers who would love to order a carton of Marlboro's without ever leaving Resistance.