Xbox has been having a pretty rocky time lately, in a variety of ways. You can’t help but feel a bit bad for it, really.
Last month, it was confirmed that the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has blocked Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision, and although that doesn’t mean that the deal is over for good (Microsoft president Brad Smith confirmed that the company will be appealing the decision), it’s still a major setback. Since then, one of the company’s most highly anticipated 2023 games, Redfall, finally released… to incredibly negative reception. Yikes.
Take a look at the trailer for Redfall below.
On top of all that, I can’t imagine that the news that Xbox titles could eventually be full of in-game advertisements could ever go down well, but here we are. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for game creator experience and ecosystem at Xbox, Sarah Bond, revealed that the company is experimenting with how to create more business model diversity, and has recently been trialling the idea of including ads in games. Yikes.
“We invest a lot of time in how we introduce more business model diversity; how we create more options,” Bond said. “We talk a lot about Game Pass because subscription is the latest option that we scaled: you have pay-to-play, then there was free-to-play, and then we introduced Game Pass.
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“We’ve talked about how we’re experimenting with other models, like what does it mean for advertising in games which is more prevalent in mobile – are there models of that that work well in PC and console? Are there other models where you might have timed slices of games and stuff like that?” she continued. “Providing creators with options and choice enables them to experiment and do what they like, and actually create more immersive and creative experiences without having to fit into a mould.”
Although the company has been contemplating using in-game ads, it could end up determining that it’s not the way forward, so we shouldn’t worry unduly for now. Let’s just hope that pay-to-play games remain free of untimely ad breaks.