Apple logo appears on PlayStation 3 site

So if you hadn't already heard, when you hit the Sony PlayStation 3 home page you're greeted with the usual requisite promo animation... and a momentary flash of the Apple logo (highlighted above). Seriously. Go check it out if you don't believe us. So, what's the deal? Well, our first inclination would be that it's either a mistake, some misplaced watermark, or the designer who put this thing up was probably about to get fired so s/he decided to have a little fun. Trust us though, we definitely would put it past Sony to be all sly and leave us some clue about a possible Apple video game partnership -- that just ain't happening at this point. We'll let you know as we learn more, but we doubt there's any current cause for alarm; especially since our videogame lovin' sister site Joystiq gave Sony's PR peeps a call, and they were as surprised to discover this as we were.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: So from the sound of it Occam's razor strikes again. Looks like that logo flashes when you author using a trial version of Apple's Shake. So basically from what we can ascertain, Sony (or its ad agency) is too cheap to buy their people the full version of Shake, which goes for $500 list on Apple's site. Tisk, tisk!

[Tobi @ Jul 7th 2006 2:21PM]

I didn't see it.

[last @ Jul 7th 2006 2:21PM]

...i don't see it...sorry

[Beni @ Jul 7th 2006 2:22PM]

Weird. Very weird. I doubt there's a partnership, otherwise it wouldn't flash so quickly.

Oddly, though, I can't seem to find the logo flash. Maybe they fixed it? ...Maybe I need to clean my screen...

[Pete Avila @ Jul 7th 2006 2:23PM]

I wonder why hmmmmmm...

[Mercenary @ Jul 7th 2006 2:24PM]

Mystery solved

http://web.mac.com/mouseh/streamvideo14.swf

whoever made the page for sony stole this and didnt do a good enough job of editing it. Tisk tisk tisk.

[Greenfly360 @ Jul 7th 2006 2:24PM]

If this does mean an apple-sony partnership I am really disapointed! I love apple but if they are signing this this overrated piece of crap then I see this as bad news. Why do it, why not nintendo? OMG apple what have you done?

[koppite1 @ Jul 7th 2006 2:27PM]

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/07/wtf-apple-cameos-on-ps3-website/

Read for explanation

[b-rad @ Jul 7th 2006 2:27PM]

I think it's already been removed... Quick..

[UltraBird @ Jul 7th 2006 2:28PM]

Someone at Sony looves their iPod...

[Greenfly360 @ Jul 7th 2006 2:28PM]

It Only loads once then it is never there again.

[Dan Fishkin @ Jul 7th 2006 2:28PM]

As you may recall there was at one time some rumors about itunes trying to have an ipod-compatible version of it's movies intigrated with blu-ray movies. could there be some sort of link? if not thank you whoever did this for messing with sony :)

[Loban @ Jul 7th 2006 2:29PM]

It's gone now. It was there just 5 minutes ago when I first checked, and now it's gone.

[mark @ Jul 7th 2006 2:29PM]

its removed now-

[shon @ Jul 7th 2006 2:31PM]

looks like i missed it.. or my monitor isnt calibrated properly... and im using 2x 20 mac displays :D

[Jigar @ Jul 7th 2006 2:36PM]

Hmmm....this might be weird but I see the logo still when I view the website with Firefox, but I don't see it when I use IE. Maybe it's because firefox caches the flash files?

[macattacks10 @ Jul 7th 2006 2:41PM]

Seems it is gone now, they also removed the smoke that poured down like that one flash animation linked above.

[Dan Fishkin @ Jul 7th 2006 2:46PM]

so i guess my guess was wrong.
anyways
SONY GOT OWNED!
Who agrees?

[Gio @ Jul 7th 2006 2:49PM]

I never saw the logo. Lets leave the games alone for PC's. Apple was always bad with games. + PC games are dying by the month. The new trend is Game Consoles.

[Craig @ Jul 7th 2006 2:49PM]

Well, with everyone moaning about the price of the PS3 they are trying to cut costs, by saving $500. If it were to sell 100 million consoles then the saving on each console is $0.000005. You gotta start somewhere...

[JinKazama @ Jul 7th 2006 2:57PM]

Ha, ha, oh wouldn't the perception of the PS3 change if apple was involved with it. I think the console is going to succeed regardless but a cool apple tie-in: itunes inclusion, Blu-Ray discs containing ipod compatible movies (as has been rumored) would have put more than just a shiver into MS and Nintendo.

[marsel @ Jul 7th 2006 3:03PM]

trial, if anything, nintendo is blazing trails.

by the way, i just ordered the sony nw-e507, anybody out there have it or have any opinions on it, my main concern is battery lifetime since its built in.

[Xophonic @ Jul 7th 2006 3:12PM]

Well done, very professional. Lets hope the quality control for the console is better than it is for their website.

[Darren @ Jul 7th 2006 3:17PM]

Hah!

Proves even the giants are human at heart :)

[Xophonic @ Jul 7th 2006 3:26PM]

Someone captured the site loading and flashing the logo on video.

http://web.mac.com/brendanjnr/iWeb/Sony%20%26%20Apple/www.us.ps3.com.html

[Ron @ Jul 7th 2006 3:31PM]

See it on youtube, lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPSL779qnvE

[okto @ Jul 7th 2006 3:32PM]

I think all it proves is that Sony are a bunch of douchebags.

[Josh @ Jul 7th 2006 3:49PM]

It's the DVD Studio Pro box, used as a prop. That's no watermark...

[djphatjive @ Jul 7th 2006 3:56PM]

I bet Microsoft shit there pants for a few hours!

[Jan-Paul Bultmann @ Jul 7th 2006 4:31PM]

The block in the smoke looks to me like a Powerbookbox that is used as a placeholder for the PS3.
Photographers and moviemakers sometimes have to be tricky when they need a black placeholder with a white coordination-point on it very fast ^^

[Sniper @ Jul 7th 2006 4:56PM]

Mercenary is right.... look at this better picture. you can see its the same as what mercenary showed.

http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/img.pl?image=/media/2006/july/apple_ps3/1.jpg

[Sean @ Jul 7th 2006 5:00PM]

It has nothing to do with Shake.. Shake wouldn't be used for this, and the Trial version of Shake doesn't watermark its output (and contrary to Joystiq's claim, Shake does let you render output in the trial version, it just doesn't let you save your Project File).

Sony took video of smoke coming down on an apple product box (who knows which product, it's a black box with a white apple logo on the side, the FCP Studio box on my desk fits the bill), and put a PS3 on a layer above it.

They did this in Flash, not Shake. They then screwed up the mask and the apple logo from the background movie clip shown through.

It's that simple.. no trial versions were used. No watermarks are responsible.

[Jeffrey M Foster @ Jul 7th 2006 5:02PM]

hahahahah cheap-ass sony!

doesn't surprise me at all that they use Shake, only that they're too damn cheap to PAY for it! hahahah.

[GhostDoggy @ Jul 7th 2006 5:44PM]

Next up in news: Sony endures suit as Apple get's its sauce.

[Gabe @ Jul 7th 2006 5:53PM]

It's a swf animation of smoke falling on to a Final Cut Pro box. The flash designer simply neglected to mask out the big, bright Apple logo from the box.

[jbelkin @ Jul 7th 2006 6:43PM]

I guess like MS, when you need a real presentation, they don't use Sony's editing tools & suite either ...

[Scott @ Jul 7th 2006 7:07PM]

@Gio

You're an idiot. PC Games arn't dying nor are Game Consoles a "new trend" seeing as they have been around since, what 1973?

[Chris @ Jul 7th 2006 7:09PM]

you'd think someone in PR would review the site before releasing it public

[dj rhumble.com @ Jul 7th 2006 11:16PM]

Well that can only mean one thing.... Sony/Apple monopoly. It already happened with other fortune 500 companies.

[Tony Rayo @ Jul 7th 2006 11:54PM]

I would love to see iTunes/Sony partner up, esp. since Apple seemed to shun/want no part of Microsoft's iPod intergration with the 360. However Sony already has a service in place for video/music downloads so this seems very unlikely for this and a few other reasons.

[nick @ Jul 8th 2006 12:02AM]

From earlier in the year about Sony and Apple

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2005/5/14/305

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1430

[nick @ Jul 8th 2006 12:05AM]

Oops, meant to include this one from Apple Insider, but the other one works too.

"Merrill Lynch speculates on potential Sony-Apple partnership"

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=879

[Brian @ Jul 8th 2006 12:15AM]

Nice journalism here. You post something, hype it up, and then there is a 99% chance this never existed.

[Vic @ Jul 8th 2006 12:16AM]

Umm this story was already on digg: http://www.digg.com/apple/Sony:_We_want_PS3_to_be_like_the_iPod 25 days ago.

[hey alex @ Jul 8th 2006 1:06AM]

Vic the blurb on digg was based on a story from Gamespot and picked up by Ps3fanboy about Sony comparing themselves to Apple. It's slightly different than the Apple logo appearing on a Sony site, and something about a PR announcement.

The Gamespot article mentions...

Regarding the PS3's high sticker price, Kutaragi explained it was all a matter of brand perception. "Steve Jobs could slap an Apple logo on the PS3 and sell them for $2,000 each," he said. "We couldn't do that. That's the difference between the PlayStation brand and a computer brand, like Apple." He also expressed Sony's wish to make "PlayStation" a byword for "entertainment computer."

Curiously, it continues...

He further emphasized the PS3's PC-like abilities, stating there would be no problems running popular flavors of OS, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X: "to the PS3, an OS is like any other application." However, he added that "I think that perhaps you'll see a general purpose Cell [built-in] OS." Previously, the company has said that the PS3 hard drive would come with a Linux-based OS preinstalled.

Lastly, the article concludes...

...as Apple products have managed to do in the past. "More than Microsoft," he said, "Apple is closer to our vision [for the PS3]." Although SCEI and Apple are not in competition now, Kutaragi rules out nothing in the future. "Jobs loves computers. It's only natural that our visions should overlap."

[Tsubasa Kato @ Jul 8th 2006 7:26AM]

Hmm.. Couldn't see when I loaded it, but saw the youtube version... LOL

[italian @ Jul 8th 2006 7:27AM]

that's why PS3 will cost $600!

[Sniper @ Jul 8th 2006 8:12AM]

How come this link doesn't work anymore?

http://web.mac.com/mouseh/streamvideo14.swf

??

[Greg @ Jul 8th 2006 11:28AM]

at least when you look at tyhe specs, nothing there is even related to apple...so this story is just wat they explained above...a mistake http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/specs.html

[dan @ Jul 9th 2006 1:32AM]

Did anybody think it may just be to cause some hype about the ps3 and create some rumors... more interested people means more sales...

[m @ Jul 9th 2006 3:39AM]

lol.... "Sony is too cheap to buy their people the full version of Shake"