Remember how wild video game ads were back in the early 2000s? Sony hired David Lynch to direct an Eraserhead-inspired PS2 ad, and an Xbox 360 advert featured a newborn baby being catapulted into a grave by its own umbilical cord.
Today, it's hard to believe that some of the ads from that era got approved, but many gamers have a fondness for those times when gaming ads were creative, thought-provoking, or just plain weird.
It's a sign of how things have changed that the most interesting gaming ad we've seen lately was the amusing live-action Assassin’s Creed Shadows ad from Ubisoft Brazil. But now Microsoft has brought in David Fincher, director of Seven and Fight Club, for a new Xbox ad that harks back to those days of big-budget weirdness (see our guide to the best video editing software if you're creating your own weirdness).
Xbox's new commercial was directed by Fincher and Romain Chassaing. It shows the morning routine of a humanoid rat as he gets up and heads to work. He skulks through a dreary day in the city and at the office in classic Fincher dull muted colours. There are occasional glimpses of mysterious gamers, the only humans among the rats.
That's until the protagonist gets home, flicks on his Xbox and suddenly becomes human. 'We're all human inside,' the slogan reads.
Microsoft describes it as a "wonderfully off-beat fairy tale" in which Horatio the a rat "rekindles his humanity through the joy of gaming." A much-needed dose of fun transforms Horatio into the human he always was when he "powers on his Xbox on his Samsung OLED TV".
The ad is a clear allusion to the classic rat race metaphor. The suggestion that a games console can help us reconnect with our inner human more than any day-to-day physical contact with actual humans is a little dystopian, but the ad does feel like a return to those days when gaming ads took chances and got people talking.
That seems to have been welcomed by fans, with many commenting on the YouTube video to say how it brings back memories of the Xbox 360 and more grungy early 2000s aesthetics. Let's take the opportunity to the recall a couple of the weirdest console ads from that era: Xbox's Life is Short and PlayStation's Welcome to the Third Space.
For software news, see Adobe's plans for agentic AI in Photoshop. And for visual inspiration, don't miss the upcoming Netflix The Eternaut adaptation.
