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A billboard ad in the Netherlands for the upcoming ceramic-white colored PlayStation Portable has drawn some criticism recently for its controversial imagery.

The ad shows a woman with white hair dressed in an all white outfit clutching the jaw of a shorter, black woman; next to the pair are the words, "PlayStation Portable White is coming."

A Sony spokesperson, however, says that the ad is not meant to be seen as racist.

"The marketing campaign for the launch of the White PSP in the Benelux focuses on the contrast between the Black PSP model and the new Ceramic white PSP model," the spokesperson said. "All of the 100 or so images created for the campaign have been designed to show this contrast in colors of the PSPs, and have no other message or purpose."

The adverstisement is not being run in any country oustide of Holland, as of this writing.

According to California Assemblyman Leland Yee, Sony has pulled a controversial European ad campaign for its upcoming PSP White. The electronics giant also issued an apology to those who may have been offended by the ads, one of which, posted on a billboard, portrayed a white woman squeezing the face of a black woman.

In a statement, Nick Sharples, Sony's Director of Corporate Communications in Europe, said, "We... recognize that people have a wide variety of perceptions about such imagery and we wish to apologize to those who perceived the advert differently to that intended. In future, we will apply greater sensitivity in our selection of campaign imagery, and will take due account of the increasingly global reach of such local adverts, and their potential impact in other countries."

Yee congratulated Sony for its response to the ad controversy.

"I am pleased to see Sony taking responsibility for their racially-charged ad and appropriately pulling it from the marketplace, he said. "Sony did the right thing by recognizing their insensitive mistake and apologizing for offending many of their customers."

Rick Callender, President of San Jose NAACP Chapter, seconded Yee's remarks.

"Sony has done the honorable thing by owning up to the fact that communication and ads in today's global market have a much further reach than in the past, said Callender. "Their attempt to contrast colors clearly created controversy and sparked painful feelings in the global community. Hopefully in the future, Sony will employ a better litmus test to their ad campaigns to determine if they will be sour to the taste of worldwide consumers. I commend them for their actions."

New information has been revealed that suggests that Sony's Cell manufacturing problems are not getting better while the company may be facing some additional Blu-Ray production woes.

MegaGames recently featured a story on some Cell manufacturing issues, Tom Reeves, VP of semiconductor and technology services at IBM, has now confirmed this story and suggested that things have not improved. In an interview with reed-electronics, the IBM exec stated that: With a chip like the Cell processor, you’re lucky to get (yields of) 10 or 20 percent. Reeves went on to add that using logic redundancy could double the yield but the IBM VP failed to clear up whether logic redundancy would double the 10 or 20 percent figure but for argument's sake let's assume he means that the yield could be brought up to 40 percent.

It is common for a new chip, entering the manufacturing process to produce low yields and in some cases even 30 percent is considered a decent figure. It is however, difficult to compare what Sony is planning for its PS3 with other new processors. Most new processors are not meant to have a massive launch as they target very specific markets; Sony however, has promised to ship 1 million units every month from launch. The other difference of a new chip and the PS3 is that when a processor chip does not cut the mustard it can be branded as a lower-spec processor and still be sold. According to Reeves however, IBM has been left with a lot of 6 operational core Cell chips; chips which the company doesn't know what to do with (PS3 requires 7 functional cores).

One reply from Mr. Reeves, which we found disconcerting, came when he was asked whether Sony had plans to include chips with fewer than 7 operational cores in the low-end PS3. It could, but I don’t think Sony has thought about offering that. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good uses for a chip with four SPEs (synergistic processing elements).

The other troubling news for Sony comes from its Blu-Ray manufacturing plants. According to a Chinese newspaper the plants manufacturing the diode that generates the blue laser used by Blu-Ray have not been able to meet demand. These delays have caused Sony's plants a lot of problems and it is possible that PS3 manufacture may be affected.

These issues may have been expected as a brand new chip is being manufactured, as well as a brand new DVD drive but they do highlight how risky Sony's tactics have been with the PS3. Even though the choice of Cell may have been unavoidable, the bundling of the Blu-Ray drive with PS3 was an unnecessary move which may have sacrificed the new console's future on the altar of Sony's quest to dominate the DVD distribution market. In this round of the console wars Sony has demonstrated that it has not kept its eye firmly fixed on gaming and that may alienate some of the fans PS2 had won over.

And now we can finally see the two titans side by side :



More info & pics @ Games Radar

Sony are looking cheaper by the minute(!)

And my faith is in the hackers. I'm sure the $99/year won't be an issue for long.

I wish I shared your confidence