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The Ugly, Profitable Details About Xbox Live Advertising
An anonymous reader writes "In an editorial at Penny Arcade, Ben Kuchera writes about how Microsoft's subscription-based Xbox Live platform has become an advertising cash cow — to the detriment of users who already pay for the service. Quoting: 'People who don't play video games would be forgiven if they turned on an Xbox 360 and didn't realize it was a device used to primarily play games. The first screen you see on the Xbox 360 Dashboard is often a mixture of ads for all sorts of goods and services, and many times games are in the minority of ad slots. The latest redesign increased the ad space that can be sold to advertisers, and that in turn increased this problem. Let's be clear, it is a problem. Game discovery is terrible in the current design of Xbox Live, and the usability of a system that used to be about games is suffering in order for Microsoft to make money on ads. Sadly, this issue isn't going away: Ad sales simply bring in too much money to ignore, and revenue is growing. ... I contacted Microsoft and asked how much advertising revenue impacted the profitability of the Xbox 360. "We don't share this information publicly but we can tell you that, since 2010, the advertising business has grown 142%," I was told.'"
You are absolutely right my friend. I find it amazing that people will pay money to receive ads. This is why we need a non profit FOSS console that doesn't do this crap.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Same reason why I will never have cable, and would cancel netflix in an instant if they ever showed a single advertisement on streaming.
Add The Wizard (1989) to your queue. Watch it. Realized you just watched a 90 minute infomercial for Virtual Console on Wii. Cancel Netflix.
Yes we will get off your lawn grandpa.