More Advertising in Your Next Xbox Game

ejwong writes "TheGameFeed is reporting on Microsoft's plans to offset Xbox360 game costs with more in game advertising under its subsidiary, Massive. In-game ads are gaining popularity and the wave isn't going to stop. Publishers see this as a huge potential for increased game revenues to help offset the rising development costs for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. The question is how far will they go, and how much are gamers willing to take?." From the article: "If you plan on picking up an Xbox 360 title this month, then you're probably picking up one with Massive's in-game ads. Titles such as Crackdown, Def Jam: Icon, MLB 2K7, and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 are all part of the Massive network showing off ads from Dell, Intel, Discovery Channel, Intel, NBC, Verizon and even the Navy among others. "

Comments

Re:What's The Problem

[crabpeople]

"We see all kinds of stuff in games that would normally have an ad on it in real life"

So, in real life, ads are everywhere. With no debate as to whether or not this is desireable, you have concluded that the practice should naturally be ported to games.

Hows this for a compromise: Less ads in real life, to bring them down to an ingame level.

 

"Yes it could be very easily overdone and become invasive"

Could be? Thats the entire POINT of advertising!

Re:My favorite is theaters

[MeanderingMind]

That always bothered me as well. Aren't they targetting the wrong demographic? You're telling the people who have just paid $9 to see the film that they should see films in theatres. Which is... where they already are and what they're trying to do. The people who pirate the film aren't likely to be there, they saw it 3 days before it arrived in theatres.

Brought to you by Magnavox, and Pepsi

[Omestes]

Advertising is really beggining to reach the level of absurdity. I can understand the line of reasoning behind putting advertisements on non-cable TV, but this strange trend to put advertisements into content that the consumer already has paid for boggles my mind. Yes, advertising to cover the costs free services makes sense, but when it goes towards a pay service it is nothing but greed and trying to sodomize your customers for more money.

I stopped going to baseball games because our stadium here is so peppered in ads that it distracts from the game (heck, when ESPN or such is broadcasting the game, sometimes they even pause the game for ads on TV). Our local school buses (whats left to them, most kids now being forced to use our shoddy public transportation) have ads on them. You buy a new computer and it is covered with useless services which pretty much amount to the same thing as ads. Hell its beginning to seem that a good portion of online "user" content is nothing but ads. Avertisers are now turning to strange manipulations like sending nice looking women to bars to through our nonchalant comments like "Man, my new copy of MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA makes me steamy and hot!".

What ever happened to quality selling a service?

I really think that ubiquitous advertisement is having bad consequences on people psychologically and sociologically. Advertisements depend on people not using judgment, and encouraging snap judgments based on no information, which, last I checked, is not a desirable trait. Second they further fragment society into little classes. "I'm a Nike person, who likes Coke, and runs Windows!", "Oh yeah? I'm a Reebok person who drinks Mountain Dew, and has a Mac!" Call it brand loyalty or idiocy. Hell I even knew a girl with the Nike swoosh tattooed to her arm (willingly, Nike has nothing to do with it), she didn't understand my laughing at her like it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. She really thought that "Nike" meant something (not the goddess, the corporate symbol), which is the ultimate goal of these companies.

To get a little postmodern here, advertisements try to manipulate us to live in some realm of arbitrary symbols. They try to manipulate us in all ways except rationally. The whole game is creating a need where none really exists, and this extends beyond individual products, to the whole class of consumerism. We actually beleive, now, that we need various consumer goods to survive, and we need to update these every product revision. Take cell-phones for example, how often have people told you that they couldn't live without them? We don't need consumer goods to survive. We don't need to upgrade them daily.

The new form of ads are even subverting the best way to find quality products, word of mouth. How can you trust anyone when shills are spending millions creating artificial word of mouth? I'll continue blocking all ads online, not watching television, and staying away from sporting events, and boycotting services with obnoxious ads (as opposed to innocuous or clever ones saying what a service actually does).

Yes, you can tell that this whole issue pisses me off.

Re:Brought to you by Magnavox, and Pepsi

[Omestes]

But aren't ads just really a part of culture, our shared experiences?

Yes and no. They manipulated parts of our culture, existing only for the profit on one small group of people and not the culture as a whole. They are made up, and not organic, and while some might dismiss that as pedantic, I think that authenticity is a very important concept. Most cultural displays exist for a reason good for the culture as a whole, but ads only exist to manipulate people. Advertiser dehumanize us, and use us as mere tools, which is hard to see in a positive light.

Why would they EVER let us have a choice? It's like automatic check-out in supermarkets, they can save money by firing employees and forcing their customers to do their job, with no benefit to the consumer what so ever. We take it because we have to, since there are generally LONGER lines now at check-out. If a discount was passed down to the consumer (ever) I wouldn't mind, but it is forced on us since we don't exist as people, only as nice little "money units" to be manipulated at will.

Perhaps I'm old fashioned and don't like people playing games with me, or using me for their ends with no benefit to me.

It's here to stay, and I bet if you went back and read op-ed pieces from newspapers 100 years ago there'd be people complaining about how ads have "reached the level of absurdity."

And perhaps they were right, and it has just been getting steadily worse since. I know its here to stay, because people are always apathetic cogs who accept what their given, and thanks to advertising this is a psychological fault that we endorse more and more, why would we ever try to bring free-thought as a virtue into our society, you make more money with sheep, it isn't in anyones best interest to raise a critical society. Notice how the same tools used by advertisers are now used by politicians? And that these manipulation gimmicks actually WORK? This is because we are conditioned towards this idiotic reaction.

Sorry for the rant tone, I'm just getting sick of being an instrument for someone else's ends.

"Rising development costs of the Wii"

[Overly Critical Guy]

The article mentions the Wii in that sentence, yet the Wii is by far the cheapest to develop for, by several hundred thousand, and in some cases a million or more, dollars. I'd say the Wii is the least likely to ever get ads in its games. One more reason to avoid the Dreamcast 360 and Rapestation 3 at all costs.