One of the fall's most anticipated video games for the PlayStation 3, Sony's "LittleBigPlanet," had to be yanked from shelves at the last minute Monday because it might accidentally offend Muslims.
"One of the background music tracks that was licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Quran," Sony said in a statement Monday. "We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense this may have caused."
The piece of music in question is "Tapha Niang" by the Grammy-winning Malian musician Toumani Diabaté, who sings and plays a West African stringed instrument called the kora.
Devotional music doesn't raise eyebrows in many Muslim countries, including several in West Africa including Mali, but it's a no-no for some strict Sunnis, who frown upon instrumented music of any sort.
"LittleBigPlanet" had been scheduled to hit shelves in North American on Oct. 21, the day after Sony's surprise announcement.
There's two ways of looking at this:
-It wasn't a big deal. Some guy got offended and sent a civil complaint about the game, Sony removes the track, maybe because they don't want negative reviews, or to show that they care.
-It is Sony's fault for being risky when it comes to customer attention. It will take them longer to reproduce the game not to mention the artist who made the track will not have it in the game, because of a single complaint.
What do you gents reckon?