The curtain will rise on one of the more bizarre business alliances of
recent years on Monday, when Sony’s PlayStation unit unveils a
collaboration with English National Opera.
A website that will give “the PlayStation generation” a glimpse of life backstage at a Sony-sponsored production of Puccini’s La Bohème
is part of a campaign by the Japanese group to plough nearly £1 million
into the arts in Britain, in an oblique effort to stem heavy losses at
its video games division. Sony will also pay to have a PlayStation 3
installed in the foyer of the London Coliseum.
The investment marks a shift in Sony’s marketing strategy, aimed at
bolstering its highbrow credentials and broadening the appeal of the
PS3 console before its launch in the UK next month. With a price tag of
£425, Sony is betting that as many affluent adults as children go for
the games machine.
Sony is also preparing a campaign with British schools bodies
that will promote its struggling PlayStation Portable (PSP) as a
learning tool.
As the world’s bestselling games console, the PS2 may have
attained already the status of cultural icon for millions of teenage
boys. However, with the average age of Britain’s 7.5 million PS2 owners
estimated at 24, and 70 per cent of them male, Sony is desperate to
widen the brand’s reach.
Read the full article here...Rhys Blakely
February 3, 2007
Source: TimesOnline