Sony sets Guinness World Record to raise PS4 hype in Hong Kong

The PS4 system will debut in Hong Kong on 17 December, making the city the first Asian market to launch the product—ahead of Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea later in December and Japan in February 2014.

“It has been seven years since PS3 was launched, our global sales of PS3 have reached 80 million,” an SCEH spokesperson told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “We want to do something memorable to engage with PlayStation fans, 75 per cent of whom are males aged from 16 to 40-something, for the PS4 launch.”

For the world-record stunt, SCEH partnered with SK Lam of AllRightsReserved, whose art and event company handled the highly popular Doraemon and Yellow Duck exhibitions at Harbour City earlier this year.

Setting the Guinness World Record for the” largest human image of a video game controller” involved recruiting 260 fans from the brand's 100,000 PlayStation Hong Kong Facebook fans to take part in a ‘midnight mission’ on 1 November at an outdoor venue near the Asia-World Expo on Lantau Island. The Guinness organisation required that at least 250 people take part and that an unedited video be provided.

The participants, including Commercial Radio 903 host Donald, online influencers EminLeo and Louis5 Ng, as well as HKTV celebrity Meiki Wong (who has a large online following), stood in a 39.2-square-metre area shaped like the PS4 controller.

The video production was carried out by Bomba Promotion, which used a crane to capture a bird's-eye view of the event. The brand has posted an edited video (below) on YouTube.

The marketing campaign includes print and OOH, especially in computer-games hotspots like Sino Centre in Mong Kok and computer-game malls in Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.