console marketing

A one-minute clip of Sony's keynote at E3 1995, where Steve Race takes the stage, announces the PlayStation's $299 price and leaves. It followed Sega's Saturn announcement at a higher price.

A 33c3 talk by marcan on reverse engineering the PS4 hardware to run Linux with 3D acceleration. It covers how the console differs from a PC and includes a story about tunneling PCIe over RS-232.

The fail0verflow team (bushing, marcan, sven) present console hacking at 27C3, covering Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 exploits. They explain how the PS3 was cracked after Sony removed Other OS.

A two-minute clip of comedian Bill Hicks doing his routine on marketing and advertising, with explicit language. He mocks marketers and urges them to get out of the business.

A two-minute Bill Hicks comedy bit attacking advertising and marketing people.

A short clip of Bill Hicks's stand-up bit telling marketers and advertisers to kill themselves, which is a harsh critique of advertising.

A Last Week Tonight segment on how pharmaceutical companies spend billions marketing drugs to doctors. It uses comedy to lay out the industry's questionable practices.

A short clip of Steve Jobs explaining how sales and marketing people take over mature companies from product people, leading to product decline.

Simon Sinek's TED talk presents the 'golden circle' model: great leaders and companies inspire action by starting with why they do something, before how or what. He illustrates it with Apple, Martin Luther King, the Wright brothers and, as a counterexample, TiVo.

A three-minute excerpt of a Steve Jobs interview in which he describes how monopolies let sales and marketing people displace product people, rotting a company's product sensibility, with Xerox as the example.

A short Tesla promotional video showing a car driving itself along a route from the company's Palo Alto headquarters, marketed as Full Self-Driving.

A 34C3 talk on the security architecture of the Nintendo Switch and the early progress breaking it. It introduces the Switch's custom OS and software stack, with the hackers' reverse-engineering and glitching work.

A short, deadpan Sony instructional video from E3 2013 showing how to 'share' a PS4 game by physically handing the disc to a friend. It was Sony's jab at Microsoft's planned restrictions on used games and game sharing for the Xbox One.

Adam Conover's talk at a millennial marketing conference argues that generations are an unscientific, condescending idea and that millennials do not exist as a real category. The description notes that researcher Jean Twenge later said he misrepresented some of her work.

Tony Chen of Microsoft explains at BlueHat Seattle 2019 how the Xbox One was designed to resist physical attacks. He covers the security design and hypervisor-based OS architecture that kept the console uncracked for years.

Dollar Shave Club's low-budget launch ad, in which the founder jokes his way through the case for cheap mail-order razors.

SethBling performs the first credits warp in Super Mario World on a real SNES console, a glitch that plays the ending without beating Bowser. The run relies on pixel-perfect positioning and tools such as a helper ROM hack.

An internal 1991 NeXT video in which Steve Jobs explains the company's product and marketing strategy. It shows NeXT aiming at the Unix workstation market.

Tom Scott writes a more honest VPN ad, with the sponsor's name redacted, and explains why the typical claims in VPN advertising are misleading. He notes the sponsor was not happy about it.

Microsoft's Tony Chen explains how the Xbox One was designed to resist physical attacks, including secure boot, encrypted memory, a security processor and a hypervisor. The goal was to make any hardware attack cost more than the price of many games.

A 2006 parody made by a Microsoft team that shows how the company would redesign iPod packaging, with a box piled with feature claims, logos and clutter in contrast to Apple's clean design.

Gabriella Gonzalez argues that developers misunderstand marketing as deception or hype, and applies the technology-adoption ideas of Crossing the Chasm to Haskell. She looks at what keeps Haskell from reaching mainstream programmers and what a community can do about it.

A recording of the TASBot block at Awesome Games Done Quick 2017, where a robot plays games via tool-assisted speedruns, including Super Mario 64 and Portal on an SNES via arbitrary code execution, and ending with a Twitch Plays segment. It showcases console exploits and creative hardware hacking.

John Oliver's second Last Week Tonight segment on the opioid epidemic, covering the role of large companies in driving it. It touches on Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.

Joseph White, creator of PICO-8, retraces the design of the fantasy console and how tools can shape and guide creative work. He discusses cozy, constrained design spaces and the influence of user-made cartridges.

A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.

A one-hour documentary on XBAND, the 1994 modem network for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It covers matchmaking, chat, email, leaderboards and how games were patched at runtime to cope with lag.

hbomberguy examines whether a product can be truly progressive, looking at brands that adopt social causes in their marketing, with the Gillette ad as a prompt. It argues the behavior is driven by profit, not politics.

Google's 2010 Chrome ad filmed web page rendering with a high-speed camera, comparing it with a potato gun, a pirate ship and lightning. It presented browser speed as Chrome's key selling point.

A Ben Heck Show episode tearing down the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, one of the rarest consoles ever, with its owners Terry and Dan Diebold. Part 2 then gets it working again.

A 'leaked' Microsoft video shown at its 2011 MGX conference that mocks Google's Gmail and Apps to promote Office 365. It attacks Google over email scanning and privacy.

Chapter 11 of the documentary The Corporation, on how marketing targets children, including the Nag Factor study that taught kids to nag their parents more effectively.

An IKEA Singapore ad parodying Apple product launches by presenting the 2015 catalogue as a revolutionary 'bookbook' device. It is a short, tongue-in-cheek spoof of Apple-style marketing.

Pop Culture Detective examines how the US military works with Hollywood, using the Independence Day sequel's Army recruitment tie-in as the starting point. It looks at the joint marketing between 20th Century Fox and the military.

A one-minute 1986 promo of Microsoft Windows 1.0 presented by Steve Ballmer, with a hyperbolic price pitch ending in the tag line about Nebraska.

A one-minute animated commercial for the antidepressant Zoloft, described as the original that inspired later sequels and parodies.

A parody video contrasting Nokia's polished N97 promotional material with the sluggish, buggy reality of using the phone.

Climate Town argues for moving away from gas stoves. It covers the gas industry's decades of marketing and lobbying, health effects of gas cooking, methane leaks, and the case for induction.

PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny gives a deep dive into the PS5's architecture, covering its SSD, I/O, audio and design goals. He explains how removing bottlenecks shapes future games.

A look inside Dr Abrasive's lab as he engineers a flash-card replacement for the Sega Saturn optical drive after cracking its CD protection 20 years on.