I’ve long feared that sooner or later we’ll see game publishers start including ads in their premium titles. It’s been a concern of mine ever since. Ubisoft game ads appeared in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey a few years ago due to a “technical error.”
My concern has only grown with the rise of less expensive ad-supported tiers on streaming services for TV and movies, along with the prevalence of increasingly aggressive in-game ads for microtransaction purchases in paid titles (looking at you, full price). Battlefield 6).
Pretty much the last thing I want when I sit down to relax and have fun with a game is to be marketed to like I constantly do for the rest of the day, so you can imagine how upset my reaction was to the news that Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball is considering implementing in-game ads.
talking to The gambling businessBall says that rising development costs coupled with rising hardware prices (thanks, AIfor him RAM crisis) have created a serious problem for gaming companies and seem to believe that in-game ads, implemented with careful moderation, could help solve it.
“There’s a two-sided problem. Costs have gone up too much in development and at the same time everyone feels really bad about the rising prices of hardware, software or microtransactions. That’s a challenge. It’s not good if that’s the only option,” he said. “I think the best evidence comes from the streaming (TV) space. More than 100% of the net adds in the United States for years and years have been at the ad-supported tier.”
“That hasn’t excluded anyone from ad-free experiences. Those products are still there. They’re still popular,” Ball continued. “The question is not ‘Can we put ads on everything?’ The question is, ‘Are there opportunities that allow people who can’t afford it, or wouldn’t try, to join our properties and franchises?'”
Basically it sounds like Yeah Xbox explores putting ads in games, it would do so by directing players to things like discounts on titles they don’t own or services they don’t use like Xbox Game Passrather than any product manufactured by anyone willing to pay for advertising space.
Ultimately, Ball’s goal with in-game ads would be to balance outreach with revenue that would help Xbox “keep our products affordable” and “fund the great work of our development teams.”
“I have nothing to report on Microsoft’s plans. Frankly, I haven’t read them despite my interest in the category,” he said. “But it comes from that perspective of how do we reach more people? How do we keep our products affordable? How do we make sure that we can continue to fund the great work of our development teams? That’s the goal. It’s not about putting an ad in front of someone so we can sell, you know, a pizza.”
Frankly, I am. unconditionally against ads in games regardless of context, and I would be very disappointed if Xbox followed through with this in any capacity. But if it ends up happening, I guess I’m at least glad that Microsoft and Xbox don’t want to get carried away with it. That being said, this slope seems slippery, doesn’t it?
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