Advertising in video games has always been a sensitive subject. Already in 2008, the American presidential campaign had invited itself into the game of Criterion, Burnout Paradise. Barack Obama, then running for a second term, had used the feature to promote his campaign. Older examples also exist such as in 1982 where billboards were put in Pole position to highlight the publisher’s other games. We can also think more recently of what has been done within the UFC license. Anyway, the subject still divides a lot. And that probably won’t change right away with today’s news. Indeed, they are the colleagues of Business Insider who reports the information.
Free-to-play and advertising
Microsoft is reportedly studying the possibility of integrating ingame advertisements into free-to-play games. Let’s be clear, this track would be to allow publishers to further monetize their active audience. The Seattle giant is in the process of identifying companies in the sector that could be interested in such a program. This could happen as early as the third quarter of this year according to media sources. So far, the company hasn’t confirmed any of these claims, but has responded to the allegations anyway:
We’re always looking for ways to improve the experience for players and developers, but we have nothing more to share.
While ads in mobile games have been around for several years now, they don’t have the same ubiquity on our consoles. We are already entitled to it on our Xboxes directly from the dashboard. It is sometimes even used as an argument of credibility in photo-realistic games as it can be the case in GTA V. But Microsoft is not fooled and knows a minimum of the players. That’s why the company is groping its way, fearful of irritating those who don’t expect ads on their consoles. This is also why the two sources of Business Insider are formal: Microsoft does not seem interested, initially, in recovering part of the revenue generated. This is understandable: if the company undertakes this path, it will first have to concentrate on the creation of its governance and infrastructure.
A not-so-new idea?
The words advertisements and consoles can bring back bad memories for Xbox gamers. Indeed, the idea is not recent at all and already in 2013 at the launch of the Xbox One. The console had had a strong emphasis on its media features like connected TV. It seems that the first talk of this new mount dates back to 2018, with an acceleration in 2020 with the release of the Xbox Series X|S. Another point that could be misunderstood is the security of user data. Like any company that collects a lot of data, Microsoft is cautious about letting other companies access the information it collects. Another quagmire that does not benefit from a valid standard for the whole industry.
The problem is that there are regulatory controls and privacy rules specific to each platform and they are not compatible with each other.
How do you see the possible arrival of advertisements in these titles?
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