Is In-Game Advertising The Future?
In-Game advertising is slowly but surely becoming more and more used as a way of games developers making some extra money. Fine, no problem, the cost of developing games is increasing, and any way in which they can make some extra money to keep down costs is a good thing no?
The problem as I see it is that prices aren’t really dropping, and are instead forever going up, with each new generation of console seeing another level of price threshold being reached.
Plus there is the fact that developers are also eking as much money out of gamers by upping the amount of micro transactions being offered as downloadable content. So is this what the future holds?
The gamer has to pay top dollar to buy a game in the first place, then extra moolah for any new levels or characters or whatever. And then to top it all off, we have to put up with adverts in games which over time are sure to become more intrusive.
Electronic Arts has recently expanded its deal with in-game advertising company Massive, so expect much more in this field over the next few years. Great.
At this moment in time, it seems that while games companies are reaping all the benefits, in terms of profits, gamers are failing to see any significant benefit from any of the new revenue streams.
There’s an argument that the price we pay for games means that we should get all of the new content offered for download (at a price obviously) in the first place, so that defence is a non-starter.
And then all we are left with is having to put up with in-game advertising intruding in to our experience. It’s not a pretty future that I’m painting, but it’s on it’s way, and fast, as you can see in the picture above.
[Source: Filefront]
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