Ok, the marketer and public relations engineer in me can't help but laugh just a little at the expense of the Church of England.. no, not because their views are outdated and its a little funny to see their pathetic attempts to stay relevant in a modern society but because they've just become the latest division of Sony Entertainments public relations team.

The bittersweet irony of an institution that has mastered the arts of mind controlling the masses, invoking fear and unbridled loyalty and fanaticism at the expense of reason and progress has itself become a pawn in the chess board of the of the marketing geniuses launching one of Sony's latest games.. Resistance: The Fall of Man.

Think about the perfect execution for a moment here, your marketing to a market that (in my opinion) tends to be more disenchanted with the world, and at least the church, a market that enjoys watching and participating in virtual violence, a market that is more technologically savvy and younger.. in other words a market that doesn't give a shit what the church preaches and probably to a large extent might even consider the churches disapproval to be all the testimonials they need to go out and buy a product.

Whatever that old saying is, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' rings true here, the church has offered the best endorsement that it could, that a game is violent, graphically realistic, bloody, involves the death of hundreds and has enraged 'parents groups'.. yeah.. teenagers hearing isolationist parent groups telling them that a game is bad is really going to slow down sales for Sony? Or more than likely, have the complete opposite effect because Sony has managed to offend those religious groups in just the way it needed for them to become unwilling promoters of its product to its market.

What can you say, maybe its just [the churches] 'bad' karma? The Church is after all just another business entity, sure, this statement might offend you a little if your religious, but then again if you really are religious you'd value the truth over the pain that reaching the truth costs you, and the truth is the cost of building a cathedral could sure feed a lot of starving people world wide.. but then again, maybe 'compassion' needs to be put into the perspective of it being more important that people can come and hear your preaching than it is that they have food.

After all simply being a member of the aforementioned church guarantees you the infinite reward of its membership.. right after you die, so they're just doing all those poor people a favour by enabling them a chance for something far greater than food, an unprovable promise of infinite riches.. later, right after they're dead.

Kind of reminds me of those get rich schemes, those pyramid chain letters or those marketing letters you read where the price has been slashed from $4096.00 to just $96.00 if you order right now.. its like when you go to a store and notice theres a sale, you might buy something, but when you notice they're always having super bargain 70% of everything sales it becomes a little.. scammy; to put it eloquently... and consumers are wising up to this. While the 'business people of the past' are rapidly losing market share and being beaten by more cunning businesses and Sony is a prime example of the later.

Its kind of funny that the Church has lost to a company that even I made more than last year.. Thats right, I turned a greater profit than Sony Games did last year... Think about this for a moment, the Church 'just got used' by a business that loses ~$400,000,000 million selling an in demand product.. but then again, you can't exactly call the inquisition, the earth being flat or the sun revolving around the earth declarations just to name a few as the Church's most effective product launches, its what happens when theres an unnatural monopoly, they forget to innovate and only think about crushing their competition. In a free thinking open market logic is to the church as random crashes and viruses are to Microsoft; its just a pitty that the government hasn't launched a similar antitrust case against the former.