Why wait until the Super Bowl to watch the $3 million Dante’s Inferno commercial when you could do it right now?
Yesterday, we learned that Electronic Arts had spent $3 million dollars purchasing 30 seconds of ad time in order to show off Dante’s Inferno during the upcoming Super Bowl XLIV.
And now, as it turns out, we don’t have to wait – EA has posted the commercial (seen here) to YouTube. I don’t quite understand why EA’s marketing department would take the oomph out of its own sails by revealing the spot before the Super Bowl proper, but hey, it’s their $3 million, not mine.
Given the brilliantly imaginative (and controversial) marketing campaign we’ve seen for Dante’s Inferno thus far, it’s kind of disappointing that the game’s grand finale would be a … relatively straightforward cinematic sequence with Dante cutting a swath through the legions of Hell in search of Beatrice. It shows off the game’s imaginative enemy design, sure, but where’s the controversy? This is a game with topless female lust demons, evil babies, and floppy demon wang, for crying out loud!
EA had a chance here to make the furor over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” look like a polite Sunday School discussion, and they dropped the ball. Though, knowing some audiences, directly telling everybody watching to “Go to Hell” might be enough on its own.
But it’s no floppy demon wang, that’s for certain.
