Malcolm Owen
Apple's latest commercial for the iPhone X concentrates on the premium smartphone's performance and the power of the A11 Bionic processor, by featuring a gamer using martial arts to fend off game characters entering the real world.
Published to Apple's YouTube channel on Wednesday, the "Unleash" commercial starts with a man walking down the street, playing the game Vainglory 5V5 on his iPhone X. Environmental elements of the game, including plants and crystals, suddenly appear on the street around the player, and he is attacked by a number of small creatures.
Fighting off the swarm with martial arts choreography, he then runs further down the street, only to be chased by a walking tree, which he also climbs and fights, defeating it and turning the enemy into a pile of coins. Not long after, the man uses a glowing fist to punch a giant lizard.
The commercial then cuts to the game being played on the iPhone X, showing an avatar fighting a large lizard enemy. Right at the end, the player switches applications from the game to another app, revealing he was streaming gameplay to an audience, when he stops the stream and carries on with his journey.
As well as touting the A11 Bionic's graphical capabilities, the ad spot also showcases the multitasking abilities of both the iPhone X and iOS, with the protagonist not only switching between apps, but also responding to incoming messages during the fight.
The Unleash spot follows a similar fantastical commercial for the iPhone X released earlier this month. The "Memory" ad showcased how Face ID can be used to unlock apps without needing to remember the password, via a fictional memory competition.
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7 Comments
I didn't think it was all that good. But I do like that Apple focuses on 1 or 2 things on their iOS products. Trying to show it off as best as they think they can.
Also that Apple completely ignores everyone else. Apple has never attacked anyone in a iOS ad. Even back in the day when they had their Mac Vs PC commercials. It wasn't Apple attacking anyone directly or personally. A Mac is a PC after all. PC is about as generic as you can get. You could guess it was Microsoft Windows that Apple was talking about. Then again it could be Linux, or Dell computers.
So I respect Apple for doing iOS commercials that have only focused on their own product. Not giving free publicity to others. I like seeing real world uses. Generally showing how easy it is to do things. This commerial really didn't do it for me in showing speed of the phone.
The game he is playing is called VAINGLORY.
The best game I have been playing for a while.
I assume this will work for the target audience, but in general I'm not a fan of this type of ad. It kind of reminds me of those Android ads that used a lot of CGI but not much else to attract what I assume are adolescences males. I guess this is someone different insofar as he's playing a specific game which seems to be tied to the CGI elements in the "real world" shots, but it still seems to attract a similar demographic.
For the most part they left it as a generic "PC" without mentioning any vendors, but that ended when Windows Vista was such a train wreck that they finally started mentioning Windows by name as as negative in multiple ads.
I think they also had one where they mentioned they can run Windows apps after the Intel transition happened and Boot Camp was released. They also have an infamous ad from 1984 where they attack the user for not using Macintosh Office.
I can't recall any iOS, iPhone, or iPad ads that referenced the competition, but they've been on top the whole time that it's not surprising. Same for the iPod and Watch.
They’ve definitely made more ads for the X than any other iPhone, ever.