Wii U commercial banned in the UK, ruled as misleading
One of the Wii U’s biggest selling-points is the ability to play games directly on the GamePad. Quite a few titles have supported the feature thus far, but plenty require a television to experience.
Off-TV play is now the focal point of an advertisement that has been banned in the UK.
The Advertising Standards Authority took action over the commercial above after receiving a complaint about its possibly misleading nature. The ad mentions: “Say someone wants to watch TV when you’re halfway through a game … do both, and everyone’s happy.” This seemed to imply that all titles could take advantage of the GamePad-only play functionality.
There are two sides to the story. Obviously the ASA took the stance that the ad was misleading. Nintendo, on the other hand, feels it did nothing more than demonstrate “the functional capabilities of the hardware including various examples of how the Wii U GamePad may be used in games to interact with the console.”
Ultimately the ASA banned the commercial, and it cannot air ever again in its current state.
The ASA explained:
“The ad referred to a number of features of the Wii U console and GamePad, including being able to shoot at the TV using the GamePad, switching gameplay to the GamePad if someone else wanted to use the TV and using the GamePad to zoom in on targets, enter key codes and interact with the surroundings in the game. The ASA considered that it would be clear to consumers that many of these features would not be available in all games. However, we considered that the option to switch gameplay to the GamePad controller could be available on all games, and as this was a new console consumers would not have an awareness of whether this was something specific to individual games or a general feature of the console. We considered that, in this context, the ad should have made clear that this feature would not be available on all games. Because it did not, we concluded the ad was misleading.”
