Outside looking in gives a different perspective. I turned on my 360 just now and here is what I see on the Home tab.
There are 5 boxes:
- One says: Play Homefront which is the DVD drive
- One says: Quickplay
Here's where the trouble begins:
- The big box has quickly scrolling ads for games and apps. I don't have ADHD but apparently they are targeting those that do.
- A static image for Try MLB.TV
- A static image for Godzilla, a movie on Crackle I guess. That box is usually running a video advertisement.
So 60% of what you see when you turn the 360 on is advertisements and Microsoft thinks more ads are needed. So enjoy your adbox, I am truly thinking of trading it in for anoother PS3.
The bolded is actually a pretty awesome ad. Isn't Crackle free for Gold users? The bolded seems like it's promoting free content. It's saying, "hey look here, there are free movies on this ap, enjoy!" Crackle is free, I have no idea what it does, and apparently it'll let me watch a free movie? Cool.
Either way, reading through this thread taught me that I have an incredibly high tolerance for the box ads on the 360 UI. I simply don't care and it puzzles me a bit that other people care so much about the ads on the boxes (minus the bottom right corner ads on most tabs of course). I really like that said boxes let me know about video game / app / zune related offers.
Now I don't use the apps that apparently already have 30-second mandatory video ads at this moment, nor do I use the apps mentioned in the OP's article that will have said mandatory ads in the future, so that doesn't affect me. I can join in on the hate parade if I'm ever forced to watch an ad before I watch my Clerks 2 on Netflix or before I play Vanquish.
edit: LOL, Crackle does have video spots. Well there goes that. I just tried Crackle for the first time. It forced me to watch a Via Rail ad before the "Big Daddy" movie played. That's pretty annoying. I still maintain though that the box ads on the dashboard don't bother me.