Last summer, Electronic Arts once again drew the ire of gamers by signing a partnership with PlayerWON, a company that specializes in integrating advertising into video games. Many publishers have tried it in recent months. This was the case with NBA 2K21 or even UFC 3 Ultimate Team, where we had the right to promote pages between two loading screens.
Of course, the players didn’t like this practice at all and Electronic Arts even had to deny the rumor of the partnership. Today we learn that Microsoft is developing technology to include advertising in its future games.
Xbox advertises
©Microsoft
Usually, Xbox is the model student. He’s the one who always goes with the players and makes the right decisions. Cross-platform, backwards compatibility, smart delivery or the rejection of NFTs. Phil Spencer’s teams have been impeccable for a number of years and show they listen to the players.
But this time we might come across the first small gap of the American company. In fact, Kotaku received a report stating that Microsoft is investigating an advertising program that would allow “certain brands” to buy ads, which would then appear in Xbox free-to-play games. However, the American manufacturer states in its report that these integrations “should not irritate players or disrupt games”.
According to Business Insider, Microsoft wants to integrate the ads as digitally rendered billboards into a racing game or open-world adventure. At the moment we don’t know if the advertising will be only through images or videos with sound. However, the rollout of this system is planned for the third quarter of 2022.
