Church asks Japan to join Sony campaign
LONDON - The Church of England on Wednesday urged the people of Japan to join its campaign against a violent Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). computer game that allegedly uses a British cathedral as a backdrop. — "For a global manufacturer to recreate …
Context & Ripple Effects
This escalates a dispute that broke out days earlier, when Manchester Cathedral objected to Sony depicting its interior in Resistance: Fall of Man without seeking permission. The Church has now widened the fight beyond Britain, appealing over the heads of Sony's UK operation directly to Japanese consumers in the company's home market.
For Sony, the timing compounds an already difficult stretch: the firm confirmed US job cuts at its game unit earlier in June amid struggles against Nintendo, and the company was still carrying reputational baggage from the 2006 'white riot' PlayStation ad that drew similar accusations of tone-deafness. The row's spread to the Prime Minister and games trade press by June 13 shows how far past a local grievance it has travelled.
First-order effects
- Sony faces pressure in its own domestic market as the Church of England asks Japanese consumers — not regulators or courts — to punish the company for using Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man without permission.
Second-order effects
- With the game unit already cutting costs and losing ground to Nintendo, any brand damage in Japan lands on the exact business Sony can least afford to weaken, sharpening internal arguments for concessions such as an apology or settlement.
Third-order effects
- If landmark and property owners follow the Cathedral's lead, unlicensed digital recreations of real buildings become a standing licensing and permissions question for every publisher of realistic game worlds.
The trend: Real-world property owners are beginning to assert rights over how their buildings appear inside commercial video games, forcing publishers toward formal permissions regimes.