Didn't see this posted yet on here. Glad gamers were okay with corporate consolidation of devs! Better Microsoft than independent amirite!!
Didn't see this posted yet on here. Glad gamers were okay with corporate consolidation of devs! Better Microsoft than independent amirite!!
Live adverts in games have been a thing since, I want to say, Rainbow Six: Vegas? So 2006. Then you had similar stuff in Burnout: Paradise.
Before that, games sometimes had static ads like in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (I’m sensing a pattern with Ubisoft).
Then before that you had ‘ads’ as in stuff to make the game more realistic like track advertising in racing games.
My guess is that Microsoft is offering a standardised API that publishers/agencies can use to run advertising campaigns, and then that filters down to games that use that API. They have all the demographic data they need through Xbox Live and gameplay telemetry, so they know exactly how to target adverts. Now they want to monetise that as an additional revenue stream despite, you know, charging for Xbox Live already.
Pay money to buy an Xbox so you can pay money to use Xbox Live so you can pay money to buy games and look at ads :marx-joker: You will own nothing and you will be happy, you will live in the pod and you will eat the bugs
So this is more infrastructure than "innovation".
Yes. The original had ads that would change periodically; for instance, there was advertising on the UNLV Campus map that would change (I remember it being ads for Tropic Thunder at one point)
I remember Guitar Hero 3 having still image ads in the menus and some of the levels that updated occasionally.
For racing games, I think there's an argument that most of the game is an ad for the car companies involved.