At One Time, Sony Toyed With In-Game Commercials

The Wipeout HD ads that popped up during loading were annoying, but they're small potatoes compared to a more antagonizing form of in-game advertising Sony was developing.

Sony Computer Entertainment applied for a patent that forcibly paused a game to display an ad and then resumed the game after the message was shown. Basically, Sony was working on in-game commercials.

Here's an example of how the system could work.

Figure 2 illustrates slowing a game down is one of the ways players can be pulled from playing a game. Other examples listed include: a blinking light, an audio cue, and a warning message that says "game play is about to stop." Once the game pauses players watch a commercial and a similar event (a blinking light, warning message) let's players know the game is about to begin again.

[Saaking]

Oh no, don't give MS any ideas. They already have ads on the dashboard even though we pay for them. I'm sure even the bots don't want this.

[Saaking]

I pay $60 for games. That's more than enough to avoid commercials. The day games start getting ingame commercials is the day I stop buying games.

[Mr Tretton]

Nope, you'd still buy them. You'd complain like a b*tch, but you'd still buy them. Please.

[cryymoar]

perhaps they should try selling two versions of a game,
one full priced non-ad game,
and another half priced game with ads.

[Saaking]

That sounds like a good idea, but I'd rather commercials just stay out of games.

[Cajun Chicken]

I hope Sony doesn't ever use this patent and just sue people who try to implement things with similar descriptions.

[_vx]

M$ is hungry to steal any Sony Idea/game or whatever, that company is cheap, and Sony need to be quiet about their future technologies

[Fadetoblack69]

"What? There's still an industry out there not being flooded with commercials, billboards, spam and popup advertising?? We cannot allow this!!"

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