Slaughtered-goat marketing: Potential downsides thereof

Well, I don’t know if this is for real or not, but the Dailly Mail has a story about Sony getting some fairly unsurprising backlash for “using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.” The article says:

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company’s official PlayStation magazine – but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run.

I know that Sony has had some problems lately, and just feels a bit stodgy compared to its innovation-filled history. But maybe this isn’t the best way to get that edgy reputation back.

UPDATE: An associate of Murketing assures that it’s for real, etc. etc., and forwarded a Reusters story. But that’s not why I’m updating. I’m updating because the story quotes from Sony’s apology, which I might have missed in the Daily Mail story, but demands repeating:

“We recognize,” Sony said in a statement, “that the use of a dead goat was in poor taste.”

Somebody make sure Harry Shearer knows about this, k?