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The 360 or at least (XBox Live)is not immune to this tactic. Check out this link to a diffrent Ad server company coming to a game (and other apps) near you.

http://www.massiveincorporated.com/site_network/pr /05.04.06.htm

Yep...the company is being bought by Microsoft and one of the stated reasons is to provide ads to XBOX Live games.

I have never updated Swat4 to 1.1 due to their patch adding in game advertising.
http://www.massiveincorporated.com/
"SWAT4 fans have been on the offensive, following news that the new 1.1 patch contains a feature adding advertising to the game and collecting players' data, including IP address and how long they play for. The new patch implements Massive streaming ad support, which changes some of the in-game textures to adverts for real products. It also gathers information about players, detailed in their privacy policy."

True, although adverts in AO tend to be pretty unobtrusive - they appear on billboards which usually just have game-related advertising anyhow. And the adverts are pretty well tailored to the audience - Massive Inc seem to know their business pretty well.

in-game ad campaigns resulted in a 60 percent increase in awareness of new brands.

Hmm... are you aware of this brand you've never heard of? Ok, now play this game. Now are you aware of it? No? $%&#ing 40% jerkoffs.

50 percent of study participants said they found that in-game ads make the experience more realistic, while just 21 percent disagreed. Similarly, 54 percent said in-game advertising "catches your attention." Just 17 percent disagreed, the company said.

82% agreed that the ads were "bloody annoying." Oh wait, they didn't release that statistic. I'm sure tons of people would agree that Nike signs in a baseball stadium are realistic. And that they really do grab your attention away from the game that you're playing. Neither of these things is necessarily positive, nor does it imply a sale.

If you go to Double Fusion's home page, notice how all of the pictures in the bottom-left hand corner say "fictional advertisers" in tiny text that is almost entirely cut off?

At least Massive doesn't have to lie to people about its advertisers.

Even in the FAQ things sound a little dodgy.
Does DoubleFusion gather personally identifiable information about game users?
DoubleFusion conforms to the game publisher's policy.

Which is a nice way of saying, "as much as we can get away with."

And as a final nail in the coffin, would you trust your game to an unproven israeli company whose only managed to get into one game that nobody can find? And that game has a copycat name to a legitimate game developer?

There are several titles I was looking forward to purchasing this year that I won't be buying now that I know they have Massive's ad technology in them. I was about to buy SWAT 4 when the first patch was released, and among the features in the patch changelist was this little gem:

• Added Massive Streaming Ad Support

My knee-jerk reaction was that once I've paid the $50 for a game, that's it. I've already made my contribution to the publisher's revenue stream. I am not a recurring revenue resource, and I resent being treated as one. I decided based solely on the inclusion of Massive streaming ad support not to purchase SWAT 4, even though SWAT 3 is one of my all-time favorite games.

On the other hand, Massive's front page has screenshots from the latest Splinter Cell, which I've played without really noticing the ads at all. In fact, things like the faces of soda machines make great places to put advertising in such a way that the game feels more immersive, not less. If Massive puts their ads in places that make sense contextually, like on television sets in-game, then I guess I won't have any real problem with it as long as I can destroy the TV.

The idea that they can track impressions is certainly something else entirely. I wonder if anyone has started a Massive Blacklist yet for the hosts file? It seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do. Just fire up a network sniffer, start up your Massive-infected game in singleplayer, and walk by a couple of in-game billboards. Exit the game, and see what outbound connections you made during the play session.

http://www.massiveincorporated.com/site_pubdev/rea ctions.htm:
Massive has served over 6 million game sessions, and the gamer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

so, you're all wrong, people don't mind the ads.