Microsoft has revealed more of its future vision for Kinect: voice- and gesture-controlled interactive advertising on Xbox 360.
Last week the firm registered the trademark NUADS in the US - which it describes as: "Advertising services, namely, promoting and marketing the goods and services of others through online interactive videogames."
This will be done, according to the filing, "by enabling consumers to interact with thirdparty advertising content through voice or body gestures via computer game console and sensor devices."
This would appear to be Microsoft's response to Apple's iAds, which makes advertising more palatable to the user by making use of iOS devices' unique features.
However, drawing a straight line between in-app advertising and in-game advertising may be ill-advised. There is a world of difference between an iPhone user accepting a marketing interruption as a small price to pay for free software, and a paid-up Xbox Live user finding his full-price game broken up by advertising, even if it uses Kinect.
The news is further evidence that, buoyed by the success of in-app advertising on mobiles,the industry is again looking at advertising as an extra revenue stream. Research published in February suggests the average free iPhone game generates $4 per user per month from advertising, and Paper Toss developer Backflip Studios said earlier this month that it makes as much from in-app advertising as it does from sales.
Late last year Ben Cousins, general manager of free-to-play at Electronic Arts, told us that the firm had experienced with in-game ads and microtransactions, and that "one of those took off really fast, and the other hasn't really taken off at all."
However that position was contradicted in April by EA's senior vice president of global sales, Dave Madden, who said there were "buckets of money" to be made from well-targeted in-game advertising. It appears Microsoft shares that opinion, and intends to capitalise on Kinect's early success accordingly.
Source: TechCrunch
Comments
4Imagine if you bought a ticket for a film, and as you're watching it in the theater, ads ticked by at the bottom of the screen... distracting, no? An equally terrible idea in console games, which of course cost considerably more to purchase.
what if that ticket was half price or free?
i have recently become a big fan of ad suported game services like i-win on the pc, so if ms comes up with something like that...well then bring it on.
I have a horrible feeling that not owning Kinect will not get me out of this.
In a board room somewhere on the Xbox campus:
How do we make the Kinect experience better and differentiate ourselves from out competitors? Have voice support in countries that currently don't have it (ie Australia)? Make it so Kinect can be used sitting down? How about put distracting ads in the games?
*everyone cheers, jumps to their feet, nods in agreement*