Would you mind Commercials in loading screens?

[infinity4]

Would you mind a 20-30 second commercials in a game's loading sequences?

nah, in that case i want discounts though (bout 50%). i want minigame (like Ridge Racer 7, where u play a game during installation on PS3)

 

[weaksauce]

No, I wouldn't mind.

 

[Flux]

It's inevitable. It's as simple as that.

Now, would they have the nerve to stream full blown video commercials during loadings of full priced games? Surely not, but you can sure expect a lot of demos, trailers, small/cheap downloadable games to come with a a healthy amount of video commercials.

The broadcasting networks are suffering every years from the loss of potential advertisment viewers (multiplicity of channels and thus people hoping on other channels during ads, PVRs, competition from other media, such as internet or videogames, etc..). This hurts the networks, but also the ad centrals which handle the commercial placements.
So, if people are not watching TV ads, but instead are playing videogames, well then the nice folks in charge of advertisement groups will simply bring the advertisement to them.
And people won't be able to do much against it. Just think about it, the console manufacturers, with their platform OSes, and the publishers, with their software, have access to a huge and extremely targeted sample of folks, who are forced to watch their screen (once the loading is done, the game can start right away.)

It's just way too obvious not to happen. It's a matter of when, not if.
And the fact that you can target a particular crowd is making this a fantastic ad stream for the marketeers. You can display toys ads during Spongebob loadings, expensive sneaker ads during Madden loadings, etc...

And as Acert pointed out, you will surely have to face longer than what they should have been loadings. We might see every, well thoses that rely a lot on ad streams, games install themselves on the HDD at the first start, some sort of initial long loading. Just to give them a reason to have a long ad before every play.
Anyway, that's the price to pay for... Hmm... I don't know what we get in return, as consumers, but at least we know the price we have to pay for it, heh.

You wouldn't like it if the ads payed for a more complete game with more features?

 

[Skrying]

You wouldn't like it if the ads payed for a more complete game with more features?

It wouldn't though, and that's already been established. Apparently games are horrible at generating profit, so the ads would be used to finally make a profit on the existing game system.

 

[Flux]

It wouldn't though, and that's already been established. Apparently games are horrible at generating profit, so the ads would be used to finally make a profit on the existing game system.

how has the it been established?

 

[Skrying]

how has the it been established?

Because hardly any games actually break a profit. Like mentioned earlier, for Halo or GTA there is 10 or 20 games that hardly sell, those games cost a lot of money to make as well. In order to recoup some of that money ads could be used. Also, there are games already out that include ads and none of them have been released at reduced cost.

 

[jandar]

Plain and simple,
why should game makers continue to have the chance to lose money? That means piss-poor management/executive decisions.
Any company that bleeds money needs to stop being a company.

In game ads can be used and generally accepted by people in most circumstances:

1. It fits the game. Bully could use Coke/Pepsi as a sponsor and have some vending machines, etc...

2. Reduce the price of the game, or offer free updates advertiser supported.

3. The big developers need to realize that their days are numbered. You can only keep turning out shit for so long and expect people to buy it. (this means you EA,) And then try to shoehorn more money by forcing people to pay for updates that should have been part of the game.

4. Anything in game has to be part of the game and cannot be seen as intrusive. An ad for Nike on a desert combat game would be bad, however, finding a broken down dasani water truck might fit, etc....

 

[Fafalada]

there are 50 games that sell a grand total of 10,000 copies in a lifespan of 5 years

There's always the budget market - it may not look like the most lucrative thing in the world, but there's titles out there that sold/shipped milions through Wallmart that most people haven't even heard of through NPD (or their NPD totals made them look like bombs).

Anyway on topic of commercials - I suppose it is inevitable, although load screen ads sounds plain bad. EA already gets away with horrific loadtimes as it is - if ads happen, they'll at least double those, and won't even get called out on it anymore

 

[crystalcube]

Will we also see two version of games ? Something like:

1. $60 for game without ads
2. $40 for ad infested game

or maybe pay extra online to disable ads ?