Shuhei Yoshida* continues his climb up the charts of company President’s we’d definitely play SINGSTAR with, by starring in this completely unnecessary, but slick and surprising unboxing video. Unboxing videos have become as ubiquitous as “Let’s Play Videos” and if you’re not quite up to speed, you watch a video clip of someone ripping apart retail packaging and then showing you the results (sometimes in HD!). Let’s reserve judgement and our theories on the mass cultural deterioration of our species, because we’ve all done it at some point.
Among the 80’s WAR GAMES and TRON inspired set sits the retail packaging for one of the most anticipated consoles this summer. Shrouded in flashing lights and switches, a mysterious figure emerges with leather gloves to literally pull off the plastic of all the things you get for your $549AU. I particularly enjoyed the unveiling of the mono-headset as a clump of non-descript wire. Hilarious.
The video’s moment of truth comes when our tour guide pulls out the black angular PS4 under a Richard Deakins style spotlight, like some kind of crazed treasure hunter. The cherry on top of this chocolate sundae of awesome is when our unboxer is revealed to be none other than Shuhei Yoshida himself, “Greatness awaits” he whispers. He then applies his trademark grin of “I am enjoying this way too much”.
Mr Yoshida has done us all a favour. Aspiring amateur YouTube game media people, put your cameras away, there’s no way you can compete with this video (heck, even I was considering doing it just for “content”). Just plug that PS4 in on Launch Day and enjoy your games, because midnight launches are tough, you earned it. Also leather gloves are useful, very useful for protecting your delicate gamer hands.
PlayStation 4 releases in Australia on 29 November 2013.
*There is most definitely a battle of wits between Shigeru Miyamoto, Shuhei Yoshida and Satoru Iwata to be THE Japanese boss you want to hang out with.