Adverts Coming To Xbox 360 Achievements

Joystiq reports that the charming sports custom of having game elements sponsored by a corporation or product will now be coming to Xbox Live Achievements. "A quick skim down the list of achievements for EA's upcoming NCAA 08 Football shows sponsored goals such as the 'Old Spice Red Zone Perfection' and 'Pontiac 4th Quarter Comeback.' Each achievement is accompanied by a logo for the company in the achievement's image. We can only imagine the possibilities for future Xbox 360 games. Halo Around the Collar, sponsored by Tide? Mass Effect sponsored by the Axe Effect? Grand Theft Auto IV's Bounty Beatdown (great for sopping up blood spills)? The possibilities are endless." One would hope this will stay restricted to sports games.

Good luck with that

[tulmad]

One would hope this will stay restricted to sports games.

There's money to be made in in-game advertisement, so you'll be seeing this a lot more.

Will we see any of the money from this?

[alvinrod]

I've purchased more games over the years that I care to count and I've enjoyed most of the ones that I've purchased. For the most part, cost was never a big factor in purchasing games, but with the increased costs of games this most recent generation, I've been more leerly towards purchasing titles without doing a good amount of research into them first.

Similarly, I used to have a subscription to Xbox Live but haven't played on it in a very long while. It was a fairly good service in and of itself (most of the shortcomings deal more with the people who use it than with the technical details of the service) and not really all that bad of a deal for the roughly four dollars a month that it cost. At the time it was completely free of adertisements or anything else designed to get me to fork out more cash.

However, now that there seems to be a store selling virtuals goods and other things as well as increased advertisement both online and in the games themselves, will part of the money earned by the companies who produce these games and host the online system be used to offset some of the cost that I pay for these games and services? However, if I'm cruising around in my "Built Ford Tough" Warthog in Halo 3 and then looking over the stats in the post-match Pepsi rundown, I'd like to pay a little less than the full price. If you're going to subject me to crap advertising that I'd like to escape and expect to charge me just so that I can be subjected to it, I'm not going to spend $60 on your game or $50 on your online service.

Correction.

[jZnat]

One would hope this will stay restricted to EA sports games.

There, fixed it for you. EA Sports is quickly gaining the reputation of being the low-risk, high-profit, incremental-updates-that-still-cost-$60, overly-large publisher that really shouldn't even exist anymore if people gave enough of a damn to stop buying their shit.

The fact that they are injecting even more advertising in their games comes as no surprise. Hell, if Microsoft Games started making their published games support ads, that would be surprising. Even more so if Nintendo started doing it. EA is just like that...

Re:Good luck with that

[Doctor_Jest]

Remember back in the days of VHS movies (that came out at $100 a pop or more)... and the first "subsidized" movie from Hollyweird to come out at a reasonable price was Top Gun because it had a Pepsi advert at the beginning?

Or the early days of cable television... "advert free!" because you "paid" to subscribe to it... funny... never panned out there either.

Wonder where the price drop for this advertising comes in? Guess it's not getting as far as us this time. We're paying to be advertised to. Amazing how far we've fallen.

Re:This is new?

[Thing 1]

You know, I don't follow sports much, but decided to watch a game the other day. Even the announcers are into product placement every, like, 2 minutes or so. It's shameless. So I have no doubt that it'll creep into sports games, and from there to many others.

Similarly, I just re-played Crackdown (Xbox 360) again for the first time in several months, and there are now "starting spots" in the game which try to sell you add-on packs for the game. Wish those could be disabled, I already bought the game...

More visual pollution.

[sherriw]

The visual pollution of advertising is continuing to spread to every corner our eyes could possibly rest at. Now, even the place I go to relax and ESCAPE is going to start bombarding me with ads. In game "product placement", blatant ads in the console, and more. Just great. Movies have been getting worse and worse for this- in the movie and big ones before the film.

Many products I buy come plastered with stickers for extra services or features. I pick them off when I can. Then once you step out side it's everywhere.

I can tell you a big reason why DVD sales of TV shows are so popular. No ads.

Many years ago, ads on TV and even shows named after products were getting out of control. There was a big public out-cry and things were toned down. I wonder how long until another such outcry happens again.

It's such a blight on the outdoor world and on my free time.