Sony comes under fire from NYC official

Sony Computer Entertainment America is facing criticism from a New York City official over a guerrilla marketing campaign which uses graffiti to promote the PlayStation Portable.

Last November, spray-painted images depicting cartoon characters with PSPs began appearing in seven cities across the US, including San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York.

Following speculation that the graffiti was not the work of underground artists but part of an advertising campaign, Sony admitted responsibility but said that all the wall space on which the images appeared had been legally licensed.

This was not enough to appease many local residents, however, who claimed that the advertisements were eyesores regardless of whether or not Sony had obtained permission, and many of the images were defaced with words such as "Fony".

Now Peter Vallone Jr., a councillor for the borough of Queens, has demanded that the company get rid of the ads and contribute USD 20,000 to the city's anti-graffiti program.

Speaking to the New York Post, Vallone said: "Children are impressionable, and if they see a wall with graffiti on it and they don't know that it's done with permission, it could very well lead to them believing that it's okay for them to do it."

Sony defended the ads by arguing that the simply represented a "different" way of using advertising.

This isn't the first time that a games company has been accused of encouraging graffiti by using it to promote a product - Atari recently came under fire from politicians in Florida over forthcoming PC, PS2 and Xbox title, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.