Xbox - in game adverts have appeared

[wedgie]

Yeah my original post was an Uber Blanket I agree, Wasnt meant as such though, product placement and the like, With buses, billboards and newspapers is something thats been around for a while. My point and the blanket in question was more aimed at hijacking my lovely blank loading screens

And having re-read the OP and taken on board the specific point raised, I can accept that this is where you were coming from.

 

[Gravity]

My 2p - I play games, as I guess the majority do, as a form of escapism. It's a break from the reality around you. Appropriate product placement is fine in my eyes as long as it does not break the sense of immersion into the game world. A bad example of this would be Bionic Commando, the city has just been nuked but somehow every pepsi dispenser and nvidia billboard appears to have survived the blast unscathed......

Advertising during sports events is a fairly common thing, as long as the ingame advertising is no more intrusive than what you see on tv there is no problem in my eyes. Advertising during the loading screens should be a no go full stop. Too much incentive for developers to artificially increase load times to gain more advertising time.

No doubt they will continue to do this regardless, the least they should do though is clearly mark the packaging to indicate that there will be advertising in game.

Just my opinion

 

[mark_t50]

I don't mind them so much in stuff like footie and racing games because it fits in with the theme of the game, but something like fallout 3 would look a bit weird if it had today's adverts in it. This also brings up another possible problem, what if advertising revenue became quite big and the game companies started making lots of money of it, it could potentially influence future game development, think of a scenario were a publishing company is going to fund 1 game and 2 people turn up to pitch a game.

Game 1 is 'Toon Army - Battle back from relegation' a generic footie game, nice and easy to put loads of adverts in the problem is that it's a bit naff.

Game 2 is 'Funky Space Monkey' - space game set in the year 3000. Hmmm, bit more difficult to keep the ads relative, the problem is the game is mint.

It would be a shame to see games start getting the green light just because they are easy to fit the adverts in, and see them squeeze out some other types of games that maybe are more difficult to do advertising in.

As for adverts at the start of games, just a personal thing but I would hate it and if they made it so you couldn't skip it I'd probably not buy the game, I know that sounds daft but it's one of those things that annoys me, I already go nuts when I fireup a 360 game and have to sit through 10 different developer logo screens, if they started putting ads on it would drive me insane.

 

[slambo69]

I don't mind them so much in stuff like footie and racing games because it fits in with the theme of the game, but something like fallout 3 would look a bit weird if it had today's adverts in it. This also brings up another possible problem, what if advertising revenue became quite big and the game companies started making lots of money of it, it could potentially influence future game development, think of a scenario were a publishing company is going to fund 1 game and 2 people turn up to pitch a game.

Game 1 is 'Toon Army - Battle back from relegation' a generic footie game, nice and easy to put loads of adverts in the problem is that it's a bit naff.

Game 2 is 'Funky Space Monkey' - space game set in the year 3000. Hmmm, bit more difficult to keep the ads relative, the problem is the game is mint.

It would be a shame to see games start getting the green light just because they are easy to fit the adverts in, and see them squeeze out some other types of games that maybe are more difficult to do advertising in.

As for adverts at the start of games, just a personal thing but I would hate it and if they made it so you couldn't skip it I'd probably not buy the game, I know that sounds daft but it's one of those things that annoys me, I already go nuts when I fireup a 360 game and have to sit through 10 different developer logo screens, if they started putting ads on it would drive me insane.

Well I'm sure that by in-game adverts, they mean adverts in the game, they dont interfere or change the gameplay.

In game advertising is already big, it is expected to break the $1 billion barrier next year, making just under that in 2009.

 

[kkelly]

There's been add's in game on the xbox for a while now, I have both Bad Company on PS3 & 360 and during many games on the 360 I have seen adverts such as the latest X-Men film, and some Scottish Government thing about air guns. These adds do not appear on the ps3 version however.