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Wipeout HD Loading Ads Scrapped After Uproar
RobotsDinner writes "After Monday's story about intrusive, loading-screen ads being retroactively added to the PSN racing title Wipeout HD, the popular uproar has indeed succeeded in getting Sony to pull them. You can put your pitchforks down; your voice has been heard! A Sony spokesman said, 'The ad has been removed from Wipeout HD and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay.'"
Sadly all the uproar did was make me realize that I had missed out on the expansion that came out (I bought it) :( sorry internet.
The ad has been removed from Wipeout HD and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay
Read: "We are still committed to forcing ads on you and will find a less annoying way to do so."
.
Trolling is a art,
I may look into getting the game down the road when i have some pocket cash if they truly clean up their act.
Anyone remember Jet Moto for the PSX? They had Mountain Dew and Butterfinger ads plastered on billboards through all of the races. Even the teams of racers were sponsored by different products. But hey, back then I thought it was pretty cool.
I think ads will ruin my immersion. Every product placement I've seen has always led to something I didn't like about the game:
Monkey Ball Series - DOLE IS EVERYWHERE in the games, and it gets kind of annoying.
Most racing simulator games - Can't show damage on branded vehicles
Those are the two I can think of off the top of my head.
If they included static ads, such as an image, it may not have been a problem. However, they did video advertisements that increased the load time by 10 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX4f9zts6JM
The first time a company attempts shenanigans like this, there's an uproar. Then they wait a while, for some of the people to get used to the idea, or apathetic, or both, and then attempt it again.
Too much hue and cry the second time results in a third repetition, with a slightly longer cycle. Process repeats until implementation.
EA's Fight Night Round 4 recently updated and to my surprise, I was seeing the theatrical poster for GI Joe during load screens. I thought it was rather ingenious.
In between rounds, the posters appeared again on each side of the screen. No problem, except for when the ring girl started walking around and the posters slightly obscured the view.
NOBODY MESSES WITH MY PIXELATED BOOBIES!
If I understand correctly, you buy a game and then they force ads on you? My PS3 is still in the box until gow3 comes out
did you forget to take your meds?
Add revenue is one way to keep costs down for the end user.
Last thing I heard is Apple was adding a lot of revenue and keeping costs up there . . . but this is the video game industry after all.
Ads are just an added revenue stream at the cost of the consumer. Saying they keep the price low is nonsense. They are extra, bonus, on top of the retail price revenue some sneaky biz guy thought looked cool on a powerpoint slide. Especially when they get added in an update AFTER release.
When you want me to pay for a game, you better keep ads out of it.
Funny how it takes nothing short of an uproar to convince those marketing bozos to back down. Somehow, their morale is so crippled they cannot see on their own what is good and what is not. Time after time they try, trick after trick, to move the goal line as it benefits them. Darwin was right indeed - the environment you have to survive in (marketing dept. in this case) determines the kind of creature you are. When two groups are so segregated, that one sneaks in commercials in hope the trick will pass uncovered, and the other nervously ready to uproar at the slightest suspicion, this industry is so definitely not what it once was. There is war going on - customer vs. vendor. And that is okay, nothing new here. What is hilarious, how all vendors talk like they appreciate their customers, how the customer is always right and what not. Well, apparently it takes a very angry customer to convince them he is right. Everything else is considered an ambiguous signal, the machine does not interrupt the process.
"I-robot" was a string of commercials interrupted by what they claimed was a plot
I haven't seen the film, but if your description is accurate, that would make it no different from any movie shown on basic cable TV.
I'm not even going to consider buying Wipeout HD, and I'm giving a second thought when I'm buying anything else form the same developer/publisher.
A loadscreen with an advert. Thank goodness this didnt work out.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
This company just can't help itself. They are just totally evil from top to bottom.
It just never occurs to them in advance that their customers don't like having it suddenly shoved up the ass without lube, and can only "hear them" after they are already white hot angry.
Since the Star Wars Galaxies NGE debacle, I've refused to buy anything with the Sony brand on it. I see that they are just as ethical as ever.
Corporatism != Free Market
I'm currently trying to get a refund for Wipeout HD.
Surprise surprise, the support jockey claims no refunds and tells me to read the EULA.
Sucks for them - I've got nothing better to do than to bitch endlessly about it.
This shit easily classifies as consumer fraud.
The question is could you possibly charge the company for using your bandwidth to download the ads. If this software was installed on a PC it would most likely have been tagged as ad-ware. I wonder when the first Ad-ware/Malware scanner for the PS3 will be coming out. -- A
Static ads only, no dynamic bullshit, no flashy bullshit.
In-game > loading. I'd rather see an ad on a billboard, on a poster, on the ground or even as an item i am using.
Loading the ad should NOT slow loading, to any noticeable extent.
If it IS an ad on a loading screen, it has to be as basic as possible, no bullshit small print, no details, just plain and simple to the point advertising, especially if the loading is fairly fast, people aren't going to sit and try read small print during a loading screen. (which some might find as an advantage to mislead)
Sponsoring a game with product placement is just a much nicer way to do things.
Whether it is a model of car, gun, grenade, drink of fishing net, it is just nicer.
Also, the most important one is making sure... YOUR AD FITS IN.
Don't throw some coke ads in some Stone-age game, don't put Cellphone ads in a fantasy world RPG in the middle ages.
But since the game came without ads in the first place, i'm not a big fan of this at all.
Either have ads from the start, or none at all.
This simply will not do and will almost certainly push people away from the game.
I don't know why people get in such a fucking fuss over ads, get the fuck over it.
Chances are you found this site through ADVERTISING.
I'd LOVE to see advertising during the pointless loading screens, i love to see what new things are out, especially when it is game and technology related.
As long as ads aren't intrusive or flashy and annoying, i am perfectly fine with advertising. (also, NO SOUND, absolutely no fucking sound, i have blacklisted several advertisers for autoplay sound ads, especially those god damn smiley things)
Oh, and as usual, all the "ADVERTISING IS DA DEVIL" people are out today, voting up people and downvoting those in favor of advertising.
Incoming troll mod in 3...2...1...
Hopefully Sony kicks some sense in to the company for throwing in any old ads.
But in saying that, Wipeout HD just doesn't sound like a game that would suit ads in the first place...
Great, they removed it. But they shouldn't have done it in the first place, and there should be consequences.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Some of us stick with ubuntu gaming
For people who like console-style games but dislike the consoles that they most often run on, can you recommend any PC games that support four players holding gamepads and looking at a 32" living room monitor? I have friends over often, and they don't always have a chance to bring PCs.
Personally, I don't mind adverts as long as they're not too invasive. That is my own personal opinion. Others might not share this.
The proper way to deal with the above is to release two versions and differentiate them in price. Why not release one version of the game at (for instance) half the price that contains ads, and then a premium version without ads. We'd quickly see if people accept ads during loading screens and also how much they're willing to pay for skipping them. They could even sell upgrades if there was a demand for it.
As long as companies are upfront and honest about these things, it doesn't blow up in their faces. The problem in this case really wasn't about the ads themselves, it was about Sony altered the contents of a game after it had been sold in a way that makes it worse.
It's a good thing that they were chastised by the public on account of this. If they hadn't been, some bright exec at Sony might get the splendid idea to do this with other Sony developed games like Little Big Planet, inFamous, Uncharted and so on.
regads ---
Lars
[Advertising for other games' in-game items] only increases the players' immersion and doesn't make the company any money!
It gets the player asking: "WTF is a KeroKeroCola?" A couple Bings later, "Super Mario RPG" is firmly planted in the player's mind, and the player heads to the Virtual Console section of the Wii Shop Channel to download the game. (Conversion rates may vary, just as in real life.)
Sony must be able to afford to keep the Online servers running. They have to make money some how. The situation with PC games is different, because most of the servers are run by the community.Pretty much all a PC game developer has to do is run (or contract out) a master server for the game clients to make requests to.
I already bought Wipeout HD, but if I had heard of this happening prior, I wouldn't have. Now, I won't update my version and I'm not going on PSN anymore so my disc-based games can't try and grab ads themselves. I'm not buying any PSN games anymore. Games with ads is just something I don't want to experience.
TV with ads is something I don't want to experience so I rip all my DVDs without trailers to a video jukebox, and I don't have cable or watch broadcast. Songs with ads is something I don't want to experience so I don't listen to the radio.
I just hate the feeling of constantly being pitched to. I avoid those guys on the sales floor at stores because of this too, and I don't want to be constantly bombarded with it in my own home. I wear shirts with no logos and I use shopping bags with no trademarks or logos. No ads!!! Get it Sony and everyone else?
Twinstiq, game news
Hey, it's your choice! Enjoy those ads you paid for!
Oh good, the monster wandered back to the castle. No more danger. Let's go back to the village.
Oh good, the thugs stopped beating that poor man. We've been heard! Now let's get back to what we were doing.
No! Keep those pitchforks raised, my friends. Call 911 or use your gun to defend that poor man. Otherwise, the danger will be lingering in the shadows.
So no middle ground? The game in question was cheap to buy, but still had high production value. Would it have been better to charge 60 bucks for it?
Ads are just an added revenue stream at the cost of the consumer. Saying they keep the price low is nonsense. They are extra, bonus, on top of the retail price revenue some sneaky biz guy thought looked cool on a powerpoint slide. Especially when they get added in an update AFTER release.
When you want me to pay for a game, you better keep ads out of it.
Exactly. Either make it clear before the consumer purchases the product that this is the arrangement, or don't do it.
The way things stand I can't see why it wouldn't be equally reasonable for an owner of this game to bill Sony for the bandwidth and "market access" involved with the display of the ads.
Read Pynchon.
Personally, I don't think the ads are the problem. The real problem is that I paid 20-whatever for this game and now they are forcing ads on me. If the game was free, I wouldn't mind whatever ads they add. Just quit double dipping with the customer who paid in full unless alienating your base is the plan.
What did Nintendo do that is akin to Microsoft or Sony's shenanigans?
Nintendo was the first to introduce a "lockout chip" in a home video game console. From 1985 to 2007, if you wanted your game to be displayed on a monitor large enough for more than one person to see, you had to release your game on a system with some method of crypto designed to prevent "unlicensed" companies from publishing. The trouble was that the standard form-letter policies of console makers excluded students, hobbyists, and small businesses from getting a license. Instead, their games had to run on PCs, where a multiplayer game requires a separate computer for each player. That could get very expensive very fast.
The standard workaround for this in the 2000s was a PC with the ability to output a signal to a TV. But PCs with this capability were few and far between until 720p LCD HDTVs, which can display standard XGA signals from a PC, began to dominate sales of new televisions. Now it's easy to build a home theater PC: buy a slim PC, connect your game controllers to USB ports on the PC's front panel (possibly through a hub), and connect the VGA out to your TV's VGA in. But it will still take a few years for major video game publishers to discover this market, in part because the lockout chip business model benefits them. At this point, it appears indies have a chance to enter this market (games designed for PCs connected to TVs) before the majors do.
What does "a couple Bings later" means ?
A couple of uses of MSN.com's search engine later. Unless you install a new web browser or change your home page (and a lot of people don't), Bing is your default search engine.
Are you getting paid by some guerrilla marketing firm to plant that expression in your post ?
No. Nor am I paid to say "a couple Googles later".
Now, I still have to try to understand what you meant
Read it this way: "a couple uses of a popular World Wide Web search engine later".
when it comes it but thank you to SONY for slapping some sense back into me. After the rootkit fiasco I never bought a SONY product again but I was becoming weak and wanted to get some GTA4 action going on. I have smelled the smelling salts and have woken up again. SONY never gets another yen from me (still).
The game in question was cheap to buy, but still had high production value.
Was it? Some people mentioned it was already premium-priced compared to other games on the service is what sold on. No real idea though.
As for the middle ground, no there is none, in my opinion. If I pay for something I do not want ads. Games are something to relax. Something where you can focus on the fun. Not something where you have to bother with crappy ever-present ads that you already struggle to block and ignore the rest of the day.