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[Business Insider] Microsoft is building an ad program that will let brands advertise in Xbox games

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
You should stop seeing everything as a console war battleground and look at the bigger picture here.
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Not a fan of more ads in game.

Only ads I'd see as suitable are ones that blend in perfectly with the game. Like in a sports game where the ads you see are real life like you see at the stadium or arena correlating to where you live. Makes sense to see a Pizza Pizza on the boards, as opposed to seeing a Bank of America logo. That would actually be cool because it makes it more real even though there's a money angle to it.

But for other shit, I don't want or need to see a Tim Hortons billboard in a Forza game even if it might be realistic.

And I dont want fake tv commercials in my face with local companies.
 
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Persecution complexes more like it.
Sony guys complain all the time about mean ole Xbox fans. Surprised you missed it. 😉 Why would Sony fans care about this 'issue' on the Xbox anyway? 🤔 It's especially curious seeing them continue to get the topic of the thread wrong and misrepresent the issue at hand. I wonder why? 🙃
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Sony guys complain all the time about mean ole Xbox fans. Surprised you missed it. 😉 Why would Sony fans care about this 'issue' on the Xbox anyway? 🤔 It's especially curious seeing them continue to get the topic of the thread wrong and misrepresent the issue at hand. I wonder why? 🙃
Only Sony, huh?

Poor wittle Xbox fans, always so innocent and persecuted. They never do the same... ever.
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Mistake

Member
I think this could actually have a lot of potential depending on the game you’re playing. Not as normal ads you view, but as usable products. Imagine spiderman throwing a truck of dawn at an oil spill, or citizens complaining about his web everywhere, so he gets a windex mission :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

dcmk7

Banned
Sony guys complain all the time about mean ole Xbox fans. Surprised you missed it. 😉 Why would Sony fans care about this 'issue' on the Xbox anyway? 🤔 It's especially curious seeing them continue to get the topic of the thread wrong and misrepresent the issue at hand. I wonder why? 🙃
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The problem with your slippery slope argument is that Game pass, which you've already acknowledged this article was NOT about, has full retail games on it. It does NOT have exclusive Game pass only content so you guys are basically arguing that ALL games on Xbox will have intrusive ads whether they are retail, sub service or F2P. There is no evidence of this and it smells strongly of FUD.

You're misunderstanding me; when I say "if they limit this to F2P and games accessed through GamePass", I literally mean versions of games that are accessed via GamePass. Whether it has a full retail version is besides the point; if the customer is essentially playing that game for free from the GamePass selection, them extending this to those versions of the games would be tolerable. Precisely because that customer isn't actually paying for the full game; they're just paying for a subscription service to play that game for "free".

The versions that people have to actually purchase outright, leave this stuff out of those and that makes it a tolerable situation/reality. If someone who accessed it simply through GamePass ends up buying it, then they should be able to play that game going forward without any ads. There's nothing FUD about it.

Forgive some of the Xbox fans here if they respond with hostility to arguments made that are disingenuous at best which is a recurring theme when it comes to just about anything Xbox. Since ads are not a new thing in games the entire reaction from many here who don't have an Xbox at all rings mighty hollow.

Well apparently this won't just be limited to Microsoft anymore if the new rumors of Sony planning the same are true, and again if it's full-on ads outside of F2P or games through the subscription service, Microsoft and Sony can go kick rocks IMHO.

But you can't pretend that the worries about this WRT Xbox are just pure FUD and BS; remember Microsoft tried pushing some rather draconian DRM at the start of last generation, and pretty much confirmed those earlier rumors and leaks? Then they had that horrible messaging after the confirmation, and the NSA leaks happened, and they had to walk everything back but by then the damage was done? Remember how leaks started showing up that Sony, too™ were planning to do the exact same thing, but in reality they didn't? Whether they planned to or not isn't the point; they never at any point officiated those rumors at all, let alone to the degree Microsoft did, so the black eye was squarely on MS.

Then this generation, last year they were about to double the price of XBL Gold. Wait scratch that; they did double the price of XBL Gold, then reneged it in two days due to the sheer amount of backlash. Imagine if social media wasn't as prevalent as it is today, how much longer they'd of stuck with that 100% increase in price, and how much more damage that'd of done. And that happened last year! Things like that, they're why the worry is a bit more palpable when it comes to Microsoft on these things, their history with doling these monetization-focused services and additions out isn't the best. Sony doesn't have that type of history, so while it sucks to hear they are planning something similar (which really depends on how they and MS actually do it), there's more room to believe that they simply aren't planning or will actually do this at all.

Like I said man, I hope it's either full ads but limited to just F2P games and (since you know they won't stop there) versions of games accessed from services like GamePass (especially if it means they won't need to do a price increase), OR it's Burnout Paradise-style with integrated, passive billboard-style ads (though like someone on Era put it, this could actually have a negative impact on game design because devs may choose the less risky creative/fantastical settings if it means maximizing ad space in their games for ads that don't clash with the setting). If it ends up being full ads going into retail versions of games, that you can't even skip, then we have a major problem. This is already a slippery slope, that would just unleash a waterfall of hell.
 
I mean, we already see it with sports games and GT7.

GT7 has so much real world ads on signage as well as decals from performance brands for tracks and cars, it's staggering. No commercials, no advertisements, if you want to go to the products site, it has a video link with a brief history under the car brands (to actually car shop or brake shop IRL), etc..

Adds to the overall realism in a real world racing game, IMO.

Now if we ever reach the "skip ad in 5... 4..." ... then, I'm out.

See, I can tolerate it like that, at that level of excessiveness even, in realistic sports and simulator games, because they're essentially based in the real world precisely. They also don't really tell any kind of story whatsoever (nothing riveting, anyway), and in the case of the GT7 stuff, you see that in the real-world racing leagues anyway. Cars covered front-to-back with company logos and stuff. It looks ridiculous, but it's accurate?

But yeah, if they go for full-on Youtube-style (or worst, Twitch. Seriously, my adblock doesn't even work on Twitch and I don't have Twitch or any Twitch pages whitelisted, either) ads popping up out of nowhere, that's a line too far. Can't worry about beating a boss, then a Doritos ad pops up, cuts back to the game and I die. Screw that.

History tells us that we as a collective do accept anything no matter what brand, dev - we never think as a group, we think as fans of a brand.

Sadly this is true. I guess some people think it will stop at just F2P games but again, if it's successful there, why would these companies, that want to make more & more money, not then put it into the non-F2P games? Nothing would really stop them. MTX and loot boxes were supposed to stay in mobile F2P games too, what happened there?

Plus, even saying "as long as it's F2P I don't see a problem" is bad because what if a company that normally made non-F2P games suddenly shifted everything to F2P? Well now all their games could have these potentially intrusive ads all over them. The rumors already talk about having ads in lobbies; that's a possible worst-case and it wouldn't stop there. Games that we'd never have to worry about with this stuff (since before they were weren't F2P), like Halo, now we suddenly have to worry about this because they've moved to a F2P model for the core content.

Some people just don't think about this stuff in 4D chess; they could. But they're brand fans, that holds them back. Way more of them now than ever before so I guess it's an inevitability. Let's see if they're tasteful about it and if so how long that lasts until if/when it becomes more blatant, intrusive and tasteless.
 

GHG

Gold Member
I am just shocked they took a story about in game ads in F2P software and made it about Game pass. Then complain that other people are console warriors? Complete lack of self awareness.

Always egging these guys on aren't you? And they get encouraged by, it like lambs to the slaughter.

Sad to see.
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
Eager to see Sony shills backpedal out of this one with a smile on their face:

tenor.gif


It didn't even last a week, lmao. Oooof...
I haven’t owned a PlayStation system since the PSOne, and this gen is the first one I got a Nintendo system since the Super Nintendo. Just because I have a negative opinion of Microsoft doesn’t mean I am a fanboy.
 

Filben

Member
Just one more reason then to put (99% of) f2p games into the trash.

Even now without this it often feels like f2p games are primarily MTX markets filled with fomo and other manipulative tricks having a "game" built around it and masqueraded with.
 
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