Product Placement in Online Gaming

ceejayoz writes "MSNBC/Reuters has an article about product placement in 'The Sims Online'. EA has made a multimillion dollar deal with Intel and McDonalds to include 'Intel's familiar jingle, its product logo, and computers using its Pentium 4 processor' and 'a McDonald's kiosk and ... the company's branded food' in the game."

Comments

Re:The Sims will eat McDonalds food?

[WizardX]

To clear up some common misconceptions regarding the (in)famous coffee spilled in crotch incident.

1. The coffee was WELL above hot hold tempatures, the coffee, IIRC was about 180 - 190, more than sufficient for 2nd and 3rd degree burns, esp. on delicate skin.

2. The woman went after and received medical bills only. No pain and suffering, no punitive, just med bills.

3. The damage caused by the spilled coffee damaged her geritals so badly, she had to have fscking recontructive surgery on her labia.

See this link.

This is nowhere NEAR the first time

[Matey-O]

Last year Sobe had a 'vendo' in Munch's oddysee...gave you back your health. (What about truth in advertising?)

I'm 90% certain the Atari 2600 E.T. game had Reeses Pieces in it. (E.T. was supposed to be caught with M&M's, but Speilberg couldn't get the rights. Boy was THAT a bonehead move!)

Re:Perfect revenue model for TV shows

[tunabomber]

Oh boy! Who needs content when you can have wall-to-wall advertisements?

There was a recent article tthat suggested that product placement could be a means of getting the content cabal to give up their hard stance on PVR's, or conversely, cause a degradation in content quality.

Oh well, at least it will be better than putting ads in music.

Heh

[zapfie]

Yeah.. this is a first for McDonalds.. they have never paid for product placement in games.. no siree..

Re:Grand Turismo Series Does It Right

[DennyK]

No, actually, it was a licensing issue. There was also a Lamborghini Diablo in the Japanese version of the game that was removed for the U.S. release because of licensing.

There are actually quasi-Porsches in the game...they couldn't get a license agreement with Porsche, but they slipped them into the game under the RUF emblem, by stretching the definition of a "automobile manufacturer" a wee bit. RUF is a company which sells heavily modified Porsches.

In any case, the focus is not really on "import racing" so much as it is on street and road racing in general. Yes, there are a lot of Japanese cars...which is to be expected, since the game was designed in Japan. ;) There are several American cars in the game, as well as European cars, and also many true race cars, including several Formula One lookalikes.

DennyK

Re:Grand Turismo Series Does It Right

[nelsonal]

EA holds exclusive licenses with both companies. GT did use RUF, a tuner of Porsches as a way to get around the licenses. Although the focus of GT is import tuning, they have always included the super cars like Saleen or TVR for when you have silly amounts of game money to spend.