Here’s a terrible idea to start turning around Sony’s considerable financial troubles: start interrupting its games with ads.
Image via CrunchBase
A user at the NeoGAF forums spotted this patent filed in July 2011 to do exactly that. The patent is very broad and covers many different systems, but the basic notion is that gameplay will slow down before stopping entirely, an ad will display, the player will become annoyed and vow never to buy the product, and then gameplay will resume.
Ads in video games don’t have to be terrible. There are great avenues for placement in online games, from virtual billboards, TVs, or whatever else. Even putting ads on loading screens or in between levels wouldn’t be that bad, especially if people can get the demographics right.
But some of the mechanisms described in the patent application are probably the worst ways possible to integrate ads into games. It seems to me like ammunition in the patent wars rather than an actual plan – if Sony can claim ownership of the idea of interrupting gameplay for advertisements, it can try to get money out of anyone else who does something similar.
via Eurogamer
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